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THE NEW DEMOCEACT 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limotd 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lt». 

TORONTO 



THE NEW DEMOORAOY 



BY 

WALTER E. WEYL, Ph.D. 



REVISED EDITION 



Nets ^0tk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1920 

AH rights reserved, 



Copyright, 1912, 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 19 12. Repriated 
April, 191a ; August, 1912 ; January, 1913 ; 

Reprinted with corrections, April, 1914 ; April, 1916: Jmnu*ry, 19x8. 



Replaeement 



NortoooU \$rai» 

J. t. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Oo. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 
B. P. W. 



PREFACE 

I SHOULD like to supplement this book by an account of 
the great mdustrial and poUtical changes of the last two 
years, changes which form a part of The New Democracy 
herein sketched. Perhaps, however, it is better to leave the 
work as it was originally issued and to add nothing but my 
gratitude for its friendly reception by many thousands of 
readers. 



,it! .' 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



BOOK I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE PLUTOCRACY 



I. The Disenchantment op America , 

n. The Shadow-democracy of 1776 . 

IIL The Conquest of the Continent 

IV. The Individualistic Spirit of America 

V. The Sovereign American and his State 

VI. The Plutocratic Reorganization 

VII. Our Resplendent Plutocracy 

VIII. The Plutocracy in Politics 

IX. The Plutocracy and Public Opinion 

X. Plutocracy and Efficiency 



1 

7 

23 

36 

51 

64 

78 

96 

121 

139 



BOOK n. THE BEGINNINGS OF A DEMOCRACY 

XI. The New Social Spirit 156 

XII. Democracy and the Class War 169 

XIII. Democracy and the Social Surplus ..... 191 

XIV. The Levels of Democratic Striving .... 209 
XV. The Gathering Forces of the Democracy . • . 235 

XVI. The Tactics of the Democracy , 255 

ix 



X TABLE OP CONTENTS 

OHAPTKB PA«B 

XVII, The Industrial Program of the Democracy . 278 

XVIII. The Political Pboorau op the Democracy . . . 208 

XIX. The Social Program of the Democracy . . . 820 

XX. Can a Democracy Endure? 348 



I 



THE NEW DEMOCEACT 



I 



THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

CHAPTER I 

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF AMERICA 

AMERICA to-day is in a somber, soul-questioning mood. 
We are in a period of clamor, of bewilderment, of an 
almost tremulous unrest. We are hastily revising all our 
social conceptions. We are hastily testing all our poUtical 
ideals. We are profoundly disenchanted with the fruits of a 
century of independence. 

Our visitors from Europe in the early days of independence 
were obsessed by the unique significance of our democracy. 
To Uberty or to its excesses they ascribed all American quali- 
ties, customs, and accidents. Our native apologists laid equal 
emphasis upon democracy. In half-ludicrous, half-tragic 
oratioijg, they acclaimed the rule of the people as the essence 
and import of the new Republic. America was to be the 
eternal land of liberty, the refuge of the world^s oppressed, 
the mentor of Europe. The chosen people of the West were 
to teach the true creed of democracy, in obedience to a 
divine command, as explicit as that laid upon the ancient 
folk of Israel. 

Four generations have passed since Cornwallis surrendered 
at Yorktown. We have survived the early days of poverty 
and interstate bickering. We have grown in wealth, power, 
and prestige. We have issued triumphantly from a great 
civil war, which put an end forever to chattel slavery. Our 
institutions have not become less popular; our patriotism, 

B 1 



2 THE NEW DEMOCRAClr 

though less fervid, is perhaps deeper; our hope of equality 
is not quite dead. 

Nevertheless, to millions of men there has come a deep 
and bitter disillusionment. We are no longer the sole guard- 
ians of the Ark of the Covenant. Europe does not learn 
at our feet the facile lessons of democracy, but in some 
respects has become our teacher. Foreign observers describe 
our institutions with a galling lack of enthusiasm, and vis- 
itors from monarchical lands applaud their native liberty, 
while condoHng with us over our political '' bosses, '' our 
railroad '' kings," and our Senate " oligarchies." A swelling 
tide of native criticism overtops each foreign detraction. 

The shrill political cries which to-day fill the air are in 
vivid contrast with the stately, sounding phrases of the 
Declaration of Independence. Men speak (with an exag- 
geration which is as symptomatic as are the evils it describes) 
of sensational inequalities of wealth, insane extravagances, 
strident ostentations ; and, in the same breath, of vast, boss- 
ridden cities, with wretched slums peopled by all the world, 
with pauperism, vice, crime, insanity, and degeneration 
rampant. We disregard, it is claimed, the lives of our 
workmen. We muster women into dangerous factories. We 
enroll in our industrial army, by an infinitely cruel conscrip- 
tion, the anaemic children of the poor. We create hosts of 
unemployed men, whose sullen tramp ominously echoes 
through the streets of our relentless cities. Daily we read of 
the premature death of American babies; of the ravages 
of consumption and other "poor men's diseases"; of the 
scrapping of aged workingmen ; of the jostHng of blindly 
competing races in factory towns ; of the breakdown of 
municipal government ; of the collusion of politicians, petty 
thieves, and '' malefactors of great wealth "; of the sharpen- 
ing of an irreconcilable class conflict; of the spread of a 
hunger-born degradation, voicing itself in unpunished crimes 
of violence ; of the spread of a social vice, due in numerous 



THK DISENCHANTMENT OF AMERICA 8 

instances (according to the Committee of Fourteen) not to 
passion or to corrupt inclination, but to *'the force of actual 
physical want." According to some critics — among whom 
are conservative men with a statistical bent — American 
democracy is in process of decay. 

If we are now scourged with whips, we are, it is claimed, 
soon to be scourged with scorpions. Our evils, if uncorrected, 
must grow with the country's growth. If in a century we 
have increased from seven to ninety millions, we may well 
increase, in the coming century, to two or three hundreds 
of millions. In the lifetime of babes already born, the 
United States may be a Titanic commonwealth bestriding 
the world; a nation as superior in power to England or 
Germany as those countries are to Holland or Denmark. It 
may be a nation spreading northward to the Polar Seas, 
southward to the Isthmus, or beyond, and westward to 
Australia. It may be the greatest single factor, for good or 
evil, in the destinies of the world. 

It is this very vastness of our future that gives us pause. 
It is because in America we are about to play the game of 
life with such imprecedentedly enormous stakes that we are 
at last taking thought of the fearful chances of ill skill or ill 
luck. If to-day we have individual fortunes of four or five 
hundreds of millions, whereas in Washington's day we had 
not a single milhonaire, how overwhelming may not be our 
fortunes in the year 2000, how overbearing may not be the 
pressure of poverty upon our hundreds of millions of citizens. 
Already our free lands are gone, our cheap food is in danger. 
Soon our high wages may be threatened. It is possible to con- 
ceive of a progressive deterioration accompanying an increase 
in population. We have no guarantee that prosperity, intel- 
ligence, discontent, and democracy will be our portion. 

To-day, more than ever before in American history, dire 
prophecies gain credence. Some foretell the dissolution of 
the Republic and the rise under democratic forms of an 



4 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

absolutist empire, of a malevolent or ''benevolent feudalism" 
of business princes. Others predict a day of ''civil war, 
immense bloodshed, and eventually military discipline of 
the severest type." Grave men hope or fear a sudden 
destructive cataclysm, in which the ponderous pillars of 
our society will fall upon a blind and wretched people. 
Revolutionary and reactionary agitators are alike disil- 
lusioned. They no longer place their faith upon our tra- 
ditional democracy. 

Even the mass of men, — that experimental, inventive, 
but curiously conservative group of average Americans, — 
though voting instinctively, is beginning to feel that in es- 
sential respects the nation "conceived in liberty" has not 
borne its expected fruits. No one believes after this cen- 
tury of progress that the children of America are endowed 
with equal opportunities of life, health, education, and fruc- 
tifying leisure, nor that success depends solely upon individ- 
ual deserts. The "unalienable rights" have not availed 
against unemployment or the competition of the stronger. 
Our liberty is not yet absolute nor universally beneficent; 
our right to bear arms, our right to trial by jury, our rights 
of free speech and free assembly have been sensibly abridged. 
The slums are here ; they cannot be conjured away by 
any spell of our old democracy. Disenchanted with the 
gljprious large promises of 76, we are even, like our early 
European visitors, beginning to ascribe all evils to political 
institutions, and occasionally the unacknowledged thought 
arises : " Is democracy after all a failure ? Is not the bureau- 
cratic efficiency of Prussia as good as the democratic laxness 
and corruption of Pennsylvania ? Are not progress, honesty, 
security better than the deceptive 'unalienable rights'? 
Does democracy pay ? " 

It is in this moment of misgiving, when men are beginning 
to doubt the all-efficiency of our old-time democracy, that a 
new democracy is born. It is a new spirit, critical, concrete, 



THE DISENCHANTMENT OF AMERICA 5 

insurgent. A clear-eyed discontent is abroad in the land. 
There is a low-voiced, earnest questioning. There is a not 
unreverential breaking of the tablets of tradition. 

It is not merely the specific insurgent movement in Con- 
gress which occupies men's minds. That is but a symptom, 
but one of a hundred symptoms, of a far broader, subtler, and 
more general movement of revolt. Men in the Middle West, 
in the Far West, in the East and South ; men in the factory 
and on the farm ; men, and also women, — are looking at 
America with new eyes, as though it were the morning of 
the first day. They are using old words in strange, new 
senses ; they are appealing to old moralities in behalf of 
strange, new doctrines. It is not all ''talk'' of congressmen, 
for the man who is represented is more insurgent than the 
man who represents him. There are millions of insurgents 
who have never been to Washington. 

The new spirit is not yet self-conscious. It does not 
understand its own implications, its own alignments, or 
its own oppositions. It does not quite know whether to 
look backward or forward. It is still inchoate. It is still 
negative. 

Protestantism, too, was at first protesting, insurgent, 
negative, but Protestantism to-day is positive, plenary, and 
protested against. So our nascent, insurgent, still unfolded 
democracy, which unites many men in a common hostility 
to certain broad economic and poUtical developments, is 
now passing over to a definite constructive program. It 
is becoming positive through force and circumscription of 
its own negations. 

As it becomes positive the new spirit seeks to explain it- 
self, and in so doing to understand itself. It seeks to test 
its motives and ideals in their relation to American history 
and conditions. Is our new democracy merely the old democ- 
racy in a new coat ? Is it a return to the past or a turning 
from the past ? Is it an imported creed or a belief of native 



6 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

growth ? Is it a high-hung Utopia or an attainable end T Is 
it a destruction, or a fulfillment, of the fundamental law of 
American development ? Whence does it come ? Whither 
does it lead ? What is it and what is it to be ? What does 
it mean, for better or worse, to the common run of us ? 



4 



CHAPTER II 

THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 

WHEN the course of events is not to our liking, and we 
long for something that we do not have, our most in- 
stinctive argument is an appeal to a former golden age. We 
claim that we once had this property, this right, or this de- 
mocracy, which in later evil days has been wrongfully taken 
from us. 

Applied to America, this method of thinking presupposes 
an earher era of native, full-blown democracy, when men 
were free and equal, with universal, uncontested pohtical 
and civil rights. The period of this imagined era is vaguely 
placed at the dates of the Declaration of Independence and 
of the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Filled with a 
zeal for historical orthodoxy, we plead vehemently for 
the restoration of our one-time equahties and freedoms. 
Tacitly we assume that the broad and responsible democracy, 
for which we are now striving, once existed. 

What, however, are the facts ? To what extent were the 
democratic ideals of to-day embodied in the laws of a cen- 
tury ago? What solutions does the wisdom of our ances- 
tors offer to the perplexing problems of their descendants? 
What, in short, was our original heritage of democracy and 
how have we added to or taken from it ? 

At the time of the Declaration, as during the preceding 
one hundred and fifty years, there existed in New England, 
and elsewhere in America, a certain measure of self-rule. 
The Puritans were by no means ardent democrats, their 
government, compounded of English and Hebrew tradition, 
inclining rather to theocracy. The democratic spirit, how- 

7 



8 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ever, found expression in the town meeting, in which the 
good citizens came together to build the road, provide for the 
school, and pass laws against scolds and Sabbath-breakers. 

It was a primitive, unrepresentative democracy in a group 
small, simple, and homogeneous. It differed widely from 
the larger colonial, and later from the State and national 
governments, by which the township was subsequently to be 
overshadowed. It was a democracy of poverty, — of men 
of small means, — and herein also it differed from modern 
democracies of wealth, in which enormous fortunes and their 
getting and keeping involve the clash of gigantic interests. 

The poUtical problems of the formative days of Hamilton 
and Jefferson cannot be likened to those of to-day. Since 
Washington's inauguration our population has increased 
twenty- three fold and our national wealth probably over 
one hundred fold, while the whole structure of society has 
been metamorphosed by steam, electricity, railroad, and 
telegraph. When we realize how the poor, simple, and homo- 
geneous community of the eighteenth century has evolved into 
our present wealth}^, complex, and differentiated society, 
we need not wonder that we have failed to inherit spontane- 
ously the supposed democratic Utopia of the Declaration. 
A perfect democracy conceived in 1776 and adapted to those 
days would not have fitted comfortably upon the men of 
1911. 

In reality the democracy of 1776 was by no means perfect. 
The Declaration of Independence was not an organic law, 
but an appeal — a very special and adroit appeal — to the 
^'natural right" of revolution. It was a beautiful ideal, as 
wonderfully poised in mid-air as is to-day the golden rule 
among the thrice-armed nations of Europe. The average 
American was not a true behever in its doctrines. The '^bet- 
ter classes,^' tainted with an interested loyalty to King 
George, could not abide rebels, petitioners, and ** agitators,'' 
and among the signers were many conservative men who 



I 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 9 

feared 'Hoo much democracy," though they saw the advan- 
tage of issuing a ''platform/^ and of hanging together to 
avoid ^'hanging separately." 

Although a revolt against despotism swept through the 
land ; although the new State constitutions, conceived in the 
diluted spirit of the Declaration, breathed a distrust of gov- 
ernors, legislators, and judges, — nevertheless a democracy, 
in the sense of our present hopes, did not exist in the emanci- 
pated colonies. Of the ''free and equal" men of 1776, one 
sixth were chattel slaves. These poor blacks, largely native 
Americans, were speechless and voteless, were bought and 
sold, were mortgaged and flogged. Many whites, under 
the names redemptioners and indentured servants, were 
also limited in their civil rights, being bound to service and 
hable to harsh and cruel treatment. A large proportion of 
adult, white, free males were disfranchised. New Hampshire 
limited the suffrage to Protestant taxpayers ; South Caro- 
lina, to free white men, believing in God, Heaven, and Hell, 
with a freehold of fifty acres, or a town lot, or who had paid 
a considerable tax. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, Mary- 
land, Virginia, North Carolina, and New York the right to 
vote was based on the ownership of property (usually real 
estate) or upon the payment of equivalent taxes. In New 
Jersey no one could vote unless possessed of real estate to 
the value of fifty pounds. 

The qualifications for office were even more excluding. 
The right to be elected to the Lower House was usually 
denied to all except Christians (or Protestants) of means. 
In Delaware the candidate for office was obliged to ''profess 
faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy 
Ghost, one God blessed evermore," and to "acknowledge 
the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, to be 
given by divine inspiration/* ^ In South Carolina no man 

* See John Baoh MoMaster, "The Acquisition of the Political, Social, 
and Industrial Rights of Man in America." (Cleveland, 1903.) 



10 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

could be elected to the Lower House unless he owned five 
hundred acres and ten negro slaves, or real estate worth 150 
pounds sterling and clear of all debt. The qualifications 
for the Upper House, and especially for governor, were still 
higher. A governor of South Carolina had to be possessed 
of ten thousand pounds, a property qualification comparable 
with that of a million dollars or more for the present-day 
governors of New York or Illinois. Generally speaking, 
none but a rifch or at least well-to-do Christian was eligible 
to the office of governor. 

The will of the people, aborted by a restricted sufi'rage, 
was completely nulHfied by the ''rotten politics'^ of the time. 
The founders of the Republic, be it remembered, were not 
quiet old gentlemen in stocks, Hving honorable and pro- 
phetic lives for the uplifting of us, their putative descendants. 
They were a very human lot of people who, hking to win, 
were not overnice as to means. ''In filibustering and gerry- 
mandering,'^ writes Professor McMaster, "in stealing gov- 
ernorships and legislatures, in using force at the polls, in colo- 
nizing and in distributing patronage to whom patronage is due, 
in all the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form 
of practical poUtics, the men who founded our State and 
national governments were always our equals, and often our 
masters.'' 

By such devices the balance of power under the Revolu- 
tionary constitutions was held in the hands of the "gentle- 
men," and kept away from those whom John Adams styled 
the "simple-men." In most States the mass of the people 
were compelled to accept a subordinate position. Unrepre- 
sented by government, press, or public opinion, largely illit- 
erate and comparatively isolated, they were no match for 
the able, educated, and often unscrupulous gentlemen who 
seized political power and the fruits and spoils thereof. 

Sharp social distinctions remained. What equality existed 
was due to a level of poverty, a uniform hard striving, and 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 11 

a most unwelcome simple living. On the Appalachian 
frontier this rude equality of poor men was most clearly 
exemplified, but in the East, where were the '^well-born'' 
and the ** opulent," vestiges of aristocratic gradations lin- 
gered. The line between the scholarly or sporting Virginia 
burgess and the poor white of his district, or between the 
Madeira-drinking Dutch landlord of Albany and his neigh- 
boring shiftless farmer, was as sharp as that to-day between 
railroad president and railroad engineer. You could not 
mistake a journeyman shoemaker for his Excellency the 
Governor. The ill-clad, ill-conditioned, foul-mouthed mobs 
of the little cities delighted to bespatter mud upon the small 
clothes and silver-buckled shoes of the gentleman, who re- 
sponded with a deep scorn for the ''low-born" rascals. 

Nor did the economic conditions reflect the freedom and 
equality which were the American's inalienable rights. 
True, there was a plenitude of cheap land, offering itself as 
an alternative to wage labor; but the industrial organization 
of the revolted colonies was ineffective, commerce was slow 
and cautious, and the rude labor of even a hard-working 
farmer produced nothing but an overabundant supply of 
simple and unvaried food and clothing. As for the landless 
laborer, he toiled from sun to sun for a wage lower than that 
to-day earned by a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant. 
Such a Revolutionary toiler could not be sure when or in 
what form his wages would be paid, or indeed, whether they 
would be paid at all ; while, if he fell into debt for a few 
shillings, he might be cast into a reeking, vermin-infested 
jail, to fight with half-naked male and female prisoners for 
the retention of his clothes. 

To keep the poor among our free and equal forefathers in 
their place, a barbarous criminal law, inherited from seven- 
teenth century England, was invoked. Not only was im- 
prisonment for debt universal, but attacks upon property 
were repelled with savage severity. In Maryland a thief 



12 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

was branded with a T on his left hand, and the rogue or 
vagabond — the unemployed man — with an R on his 
shoulder. The sovereign commonwealth of New Hampshire 
branded burglars on the hand, or, if the crime was committed 
on Sunday, on the forehead; while in Virginia all ''deceitful 
bakers, dishonest cooks, cheating fishermen, careless fish 
dressers" (all of them ''simple-men") were ordered to lose 
their ears. In Virginia it was a capital crime to obtain goods 
or money under false pretenses. Branding, whipping, duck- 
ing, the cropping of ears, the pillory, and the stock were ordi- 
nary punishments for vulgar rogues. A man could be hanged 
in Pennsylvania in 1776 on a first conviction for any of 
twenty crimes ; in Virginia twenty-seven crimes were pun- 
ishable by death. The law fell with especial severity upon 
the unrepresented, voiceless, and often uneducated "simple- 
men," who feared the debtor's prison as they feared the 
omnipresent pillory and lash, or the cloth P which the un- 
fortunate pauper and his wife and children were obliged to 
wear upon the sleeve. PoUtically, industrially, socially, 
the "simple-man" was subordinate, and over this extremely 
imperfect democracy hung the black cloud of an aristocratic 
South, with its preponderating population and its wealth 
based upon the enforced labor of benighted negroes. 

America in 1776 was not a democracy. It was not 
even a democracy on paper. ^ It was at best a shadow- 
democracy. 

Nor was the substance of democracy conferred by the 
federal Constitution. If our modern ideal of democracy 
does not lead back to the noble eloquence of the Declaration, 
still less does it revert to the federal Constitution, as it 

» Of democracies on paper, Mexico is an admirable example. Our 
iister republic imitates the forms, rites, and solemn-farcical pretenses of 
democracy. No one, by merely looking at her unwinking constitution, 
could surmise that the government Is autooratio, or that peon slaves totl 
on the sisal grass plantations of Yucatan. The American Oonstltutloo, 
on the other hand, openly and unblushingly avowed slavery. 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 177d 13 

iaaued, in 1787, fresh from the Philadelphia Convention. 
Our newer democracy demands, not that the people forever 
conform to a rigid; hard-changing Constitution, but that 
the Constitution change to conform to the people. The 
Constitution of the United States is the political wisdom of 
dead America. 

So intimately has this Constitution been bound up with 
our dearest national ideals and with our very sense of na- 
tional unity, so many have been the gentle traditions which 
have clustered about this venerable document, that one hesi- 
tates to apply to it the ordinary canons of political criticism. 
For over a century we have piously exclaimed that our Con- 
stitution is the last and noblest expression of democracy. 
But, in truth, the Constitution is not democratic. It was, 
in intention, and is, in essence, undemocratic. It was con- 
ceived in a violent distrust of the common people, and was 
dedicated to the principle that "the minority of the opulent" 
must be protected from American sans-culottes. 

There was perhaps some excuse for a reactionary docu- 
ment. Things were in a bad way. Thirteen free and very 
independent States were issuing paper money and were tax- 
ing each other's commerce. The central government, under 
the Articles of Confederation, maintained a precarious and 
contemptible existence. The domestic debt was not worth 
a continental, and the interest on the foreign debt (which 
was falling due) was regularly defaulted. England and 
Spain were hemming in the disorganized States on north, 
west, and south. National preservation was all-important, 
and the Constitution paid more heed to this problem than 
to the ''unalienable rights" of men. 

Some of the men who drew up the instrument frankly pre- 
ferred a king, and the chief spirit of them all, the brilliant 
Alexander Hamilton, desired a Ufe-elected president with an 
absolute veto on all legislation, appointing governors with 
absolute vetoes over all State laws. That such an abhorrent 



14 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ideal should have been for a moment entertained indicates 
the unlimited contempt in which the greatest poUtical leaders 
of the day held the raw and vociferous American democracy. 

No king was set to rule over America. But the Constitu- 
tion, as presented by the Convention, was more subtly sub- 
versive of the popular interest than might have been a dozen 
Georges. The House of Representatives was conceived to 
be the sole popular branch of the new government, but even 
in the choice of this body no provision was made for an ex- 
tension of the then restricted suffrage. The senators, indi- 
rectly elected for long terms and without reference to the 
population of their districts, were legislators likely to be 
largely free from popular control. The power and dignity 
of the Senate were correspondingly augmented. The Presi- 
dent by his indirect election (for it was not anticipated that 
presidential electors would accept instructions) was thought 
to be even farther removed from the unstable and easily be- 
guiled people, and the Chief Executive was accordingly 
granted a qualified veto on Congress and enormous powers 
in peace and war. 

All these checks upon a supposedly democratic House 
were reenforced by what in practice is an absolute veto in- 
hering in the Supreme Court. This veto was intended to 
enable a small body of jurists, non-elected, but appointed 
for life by an indirectly elected President and an indirectly 
elected Senate, to set aside through a nullifying interpreta- 
tion or upon the ground of unconstitutionality any federal 
law, approved by any majority, as well as any State law or 
State constitution. The supposedly undemocratic federal 
government was thus to be protected from ebullitions of the 
democratic spirit in the States and the United States. 

Finally the altering of the Constitution was surrounded 
with almost insuperable difficulties, so that to-day less than 
one fortieth of the voters could conceivably frustrate the 
wish for amendment of thirty-nine fortieths. This threw 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 15 

the real power of amendment into the hands of the interpret- 
ing body, the same Supreme Court, intended by its composi- 
tion and the manner of choice and the life tenure of its 
members to be the most remote of all governmental agencies 
from the operation of popular control. Popular rights were 
presumably, for all time, bottled up. 

The greatest merit — and the greatest defect — of the 
Constitution is that it has survived. It might be well if 
the American people would recast their Constitution every 
generation.^ We would assuredly do better in 1911 with a 
twentieth century organic law than with an almost unchange- 
able constitution, which antedated the railroad, the steam- 
boat, and the French Revolution, and was contemporary 
with George the Third, Marie Antoinette, and flintlock mus- 
kets. In the early days, however, when the States were jeal- 
ous, exigent, and eternally overvigilant, any bond of union, 
if only strong enough, was good. Our eighteenth century 
Constitution was a marvel of judicious compromises and 
wise evasions, and its ratification was a long step forward 
towards political autonomy. 

This ratification was not a popular one, for the Constitu- 
tion was never fairly presented for adoption to the people, 
but was accepted by a small minority during a reactionary 
year in a fear of foreign aggression and domestic anarchy. 
Even many who voted for the adoption of the Constitution 
were opposed to its principles, but by cajolery, logrolling, 
and questionable tactics the ratification was finally secured. 
The far-seeing leaders recognized that the Constitution was 
necessary. With a sop therefore to a jealous people in the 
form of the first ten amendments, guaranteeing civil and 
political rights, the dominating, intelligent minority of 
Americans decided to go ahead. 

1 Jefferson, who believed that each generation has a right to formulate 
its own organic law, advocated a policy of revising constitutions every 
nineteen years. In this way **the consent of the governed" could be 
periodically obtained. = 



16 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

That the Constitution has worked so well and compara- 
tively 80 democratically is due, less to its intrinsic merits, or 
to the genius of Hamilton and Madison, than to the modera- 
tion and political tolerance of succeeding generations of 
Americans, and to a subsequent rising tide of democracy 
which has Hberahzed our organic law, overborne it, or evaded 
it. The almost direct election of the President, the enor- 
mous influence of political parties and of public opinion, the 
widening of the suffrage, the increasingly direct election of sen- 
ators, are democratic featiu-es which were unpredicted, and 
would have been undesired, by the authors of the document. 

The new government based upon the Constitution fell 
into the hands of the conservative class. By 1789 thousands 
of wealthy loyahsts, who had fled in 1775, were reinstated 
in pubUc esteem, and these men, as well as other ''leading 
citizens, " had scant sympathy for democratic vagaries and 
demagogic vaporings. The Federalists, who had made them- 
selves responsible for the Constitution, reahzed that the 
efficiency of a political instrument depends upon the minds 
which interpret and the hands which administer it. It was 
in this spirit that they secured control of the new govern- 
ment. The formative American government thus came to 
be marked with the stamp of Hamilton, Adams, and, later, 
of John Marshall, men who had faith in the union of the 
States, but not in the people who formed their citizenry. 
These leaders recognized that it was necessary to attach to 
the nascent federal government the interested loyalty of the 
moneyed classes, which was done through the levying of a 
mildly protective tariff, the creation of a national bank, 
and the assumption of the State debts. Through the 
strengthening and astute manning of the Supreme Court, 
they created checks upon the people and upon the State 
governments, while they widely held aloof from the embraces 
of revolutionary'' France ajid tried to repress internal dis- 
affection by the ill-ad\ased Alien and Sedition Laws. 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 17 

The democratic spirit, however, was growing. A few 
months after the inauguration of President Washington, 
a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille, and the great 
French Revolution was launched. When Citizen Gen^t 
arrived in America, he found many thousands sympa- 
thetic to the new democratic doctrines. The Declaration 
of Independence was also bearing fruit. Suffrage was being 
extended in the several States; property and religious quali- 
fications were being lessened or removed ; the limitation of 
officeholding to men of wealth was made less stringent; 
and the penal law and the conduct of prisons were somewhat 
humanized. In 1800, the ^^ Jacobin" and 'Reveller," Thomas 
Jefferson, was elected President, and by 1814, after the dis- 
astrous Hartford Convention, the influence of the Federal 
party was forever gone. 

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the prog- 
ress away from the evil old conditions was even more rapid. 
The little cities were growing, and the citizens, especially the 
Journeymen workingmen who were forming unions, had no 
respect for suffrage qualifications based on the ownership of 
farms. The city poor were asking for public — not pauper 
— schools, for the right to strike, for the cessation of special 
privileges, for a mechanic's lien law, and for that most revo- 
lutionary of all programs, the abolition of imprisonment for 
debt. 

On the westward-moving border of the States, also, a new 
and iconoclastic spirit, born of the wilderness, began to 
arise. In the conflict with nature all strong men were 
equal; to pass the Appalachians, a social convention had 
needs be hardy. The pioneer, who blazed a trail through 
the primitive forest, who fought with Hull at Detroit or 
Jackson at New Orleans, who drank ^'hard cider" with 
Tippecanoe, had no remembrance of pre-Revolutionary 
gentlemen and no respect for the old-fashioned school of 
statesmen. 



18 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The wave of a new democracy — intensely individualistic, 
intensely confident, aggressive, dogmatic — passed east 
over the mountains from Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee 
into New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The new 
crude democratic movement, fed on a number of social and 
political reforms, culminated in the electoral victory of 
1828. Jackson was made President, a democratic ideal was 
fixed upon America, political traditions were unsettled, and 
the door was opened to all manner of revolutionary changes, 
good and bad. 

With the inauguration of this popular hero in 1829 began 
the spoils system, the short tenure of office, the popular boss, 
and the fresh and wholesale corruption of parties. The suf- 
frage was still further extended and the congressional caucus 
which had formerly nominated presidential candidates gave 
way to the theoretically more democratic, but in prac- 
tice equally unrepresentative, national convention. The 
prayers to the *' gentleman" leaders of public opinion died 
away, and louder appeals were made to the unquestioned 
sovereignty of an imperious people. Industrial and social 
changes also took place. The opportunities of workingmen 
were widened, and their rights were affirmed and defended. 
A wave of educational reform along democratic lines swept 
over the country, and abuses of many kinds, grown old in 
America or torn from feudal settings in Europe, were at- 
tacked and abolished. The people were supreme. A tur- 
bulent army of camp followers and spoilsmen accompanied 
Jackson in his invasion of Washington. Democracy was 
attained. 

It was a crude nation which believed that it had attained 
democracy, a nation still poor, but httle instructed, with raw 
impulses which might lead it anywhere. It was a dispersed, 
atomic nation; a nation of '^ queer,' inquisitive folk; a 
nation boasting of the armor it was to put on. It was a 
nation loudly protesting against all artificial distinctions; 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 19 

a nation in which the servant was the respected and con- 
descending ''help," and the poHceman, letter carrier, and 
stagedriver equal and aggressive citizens, proudly refusing 
to wear uniforms or other badges of servitude. It was a 
nation in which the doctor or lawyer cultivated his farm, 
and the factory girl might play the piano and write for a 
magazine. It was a nation hopefully anticipating the immi- 
nent downfall of the monarchs of ''effete Europe" ; a nation 
devoutly confident that the ultimate sanction of Divine 
Providence had been uniquely reserved for the ideally per- 
fect American Commonwealth. It was a nation shamed 
by filthy prisons, barbarous penal laws, imprisonment for 
debt, and ill-kept cities. It was a nation cursed with 
slavery. 

The evil, like the good, of the Jacksonian era is still with 
us, and only slowly are we freeing our larger, newer democ- 
racy from the trammels placed upon it by the raw, crude 
democratic movement of that day. But with all its defects, 
the democracy of the America of 1829 was far in advance of 
that of the contemporaneous world. Europe was still lying 
in the slough of reaction, following the Revolution and 
Napoleon. In England George the Fourth ruled a slum- 
bering nation, Catholic Emancipation was just being granted, 
the Reform Bill had not been passed, the "rotten boroughs" 
sent up their members to an aristocratic Parliament, and 
the hand of a noble class lay heavy upon the land. In France 
the Revolution of 1830, which was to turn over the nation 
from the Bourbon Charles X to the bourgeois monarch 
Louis Philippe, had not yet occurred. Prussia, Austria, 
Russia, Spain, were in the grasp of absolutist regimes. The 
world's hope of democracy seemed to lie to the west of the 
ocean. 

Two years later, Alexis de Tocqueville, the philosophic 
student of popular government, conceived this land as "the 
most democratic country on the face of the earth." In 



20 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

America the people had a sure foot on the ladder of freedom. 
Again and again De Tocqueville speaks of our equality of 
political rights, of property, of education, of opportunity. 
Often he speaks of the unquestioned sovereignty of the 
people, of the exclusion or voluntary retirement of aristo- 
crats. The inevitable rule of the masses, which De Tocque- 
ville everywhere foresaw, was to be studied in the towns 
of New England, on the frontier of Illinois, in the halls of 
Congress. The most youthful nation would teach its elders 
the lessons of popular government. A child would lead 
them. 

To-day the tables are turned. America no longer teaches 
democracy to an expectant world, but herself goes to school 
to Europe and Australia. Our ballot laws come from a na- 
tion younger than ourselves ; our students of political and 
industrial democracy repair to the antipodes, to England, 
Belgium, France, to semi-feudal Germany. PoHtically, as 
otherwise, we have made progress, but we are no longer so 
supremely confident that the men of 1787 could adequately 
foresee and rightly predestine the lives of the men of 1911. 
We are beset by bewildering new problems ; by portentous, 
unexpected versions of old problems ; by stubborn, staring 
facts, irreconcilable with our old optimism ; by evil, in- 
credible conditions, the impossible offspring of our early 
hopes. Where we have planted the good, the ill has sprung 
up ; where we have striven for equality, we have achieved 
inequality. 

Why have the promises of the rash young democracy of 
1829 remained unfulfilled? Why has the tortoise Europe 
outdistanced the hare ? 

There are several reasons. First, we believed that we 
already had democracy. To the early Americans, democ- 
racy was something negative, an absence of kings, of nobles, 
of political oppression, of taxation without representation. 
It was something which, having, they need not worry about, 



THE SHADOW-DEMOCRACY OF 1776 21 

like their wives, whom they loved but no longer courted. 
It was an individualistic democracy — not a democracy 
adapted to the steam engine, the big factory, the great city 
and the social relations corresponding to a complex, closely 
knit industrial system. 

A second reason was slavery. From 1787 slavery was 
an acute national problem; from 1820 to 1863 it was the 
problem of America. To have attained a plenary, socialized 
democracy, we should have been obliged to turn all our 
national thought upon the problems of the distribution of 
wealth, the effectuation of the popular will in government, 
and the creation of a national intelligence and a national 
will to cope with these problems. Such a concentration of 
our national thought was impossible during the slavery 
struggle. The South fought desperately in Congress and, 
later, on the field of battle for the maintenance and exten- 
sion of its peculiar institution, as a man fights for a drug to 
which he has become subject. The most democratic nation 
in the world was distraught over the question of the exten- 
sion of slavery at a time when the politically less advanced 
nations of western Europe were agreed that slavery and 
even serfdom were immoral, uneconomical, and obsolete. 

A still more formidable obstacle lay between America and 
the democracy to which we to-day aspire. In the early 
thirties, when De Tocqueville was studying our institutions 
so sympathetically, America stood at the parting of the 
ways. She had to choose between the attainment and mod- 
ern adaptation of the rights of men and the conquest of the 
continent ; between immediate democracy and material 
progress ; between the Declaration of Independence and 
^'manifest destiny.^' 

It was not a conscious choice ; few determinations of 
great masses of men are. It was rather a blind inclining to 
a great task, a blind fulfillment of the supreme need of the 
epoch. Unless the continent were subjugated by the na- 



22 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

tion; unless the far distant corners of the Repubhc were 
united by road and canal, by railroad and telegraph; unless 
men and goods could pass freely from Atlantic to Pacific 
and from Rio Grande to Lakes Superior and Michigan ; unless 
America were united, cemented, and fused, — the Republic 
and all its idols would perish. Theoretically America might 
have abjured Louisiana, foregone Florida, refrained from 
the Mexican fpray, and stayed at home and developed her 
democracy. Actually she was forced outward. The press- 
ing need of America was not Hberty, equality, and fraternity, 
nor yet a perfected and socialized democracy, but the con- 
quest of the continent, the fashioning of a man to conquer 
it, and the creation of a state which would aid, or at least 
not hinder, the conquest. The subjugation of this continent 
from the Appalachians to the American Desert, and beyond, 
and the search for the wealth which was its embodiment, 
must set its stamp upon the acquisitive, imaginative, and 
starkly individualistic American ; it must set its stamp upon 
the feeble, faltering, starkly individualistic state. The na- 
tion was compelled to develop along lines hostile to the high- 
est political evolution. It was compelled to sacrifice a large 
measure of immediate progress in democracy in order that 
the material substratum might be provided upon which 
eventually a fuller, deeper, nation-wide democracy could be 
reared. It was perhaps a way about — an instinctive detour. 
Thus it came about that America, in 1831 the leader in 
democracy, gave up its leadership to attempt another task. 
The immediate task before America, the frontiersman of 
civilization, was not democracy, but the Conquest of the 
Continent. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 

THE conquest of the wide-stretching continent lying 
to the west of the Appalachians, gave to American 
development a tendency adverse from the evolution of 
a socialized democracy. It made America atomic. It 
led automatically to a loose political coherence and to a 
structureless economic system. The trust, the hundred- 
millionaire, and the slum were latent in the land which the 
American people in their first century of freedom were to 
subjugate. 

That land was one of the most magnificent portions of 
a fertile world. The immense domain stretched from Appa- 
lachians to Pacific, with broad, deep rivers, with a chain 
of fresh- water lakes unique in the world, and with ex- 
haustless supplies of water power. The varied climate 
was adapted to all the purposes of civilization ; the soil 
was fertile beyond the experience of European cultivators. 
A million square miles of forest, with treasures of pine, 
oak, hickory, and ash, stretched like a shoreless sea before 
the eyes of the early settlers. In those forests and on the 
plains beyond were numberless deer, buffalo, mountain 
sheeo, and fur-bearing animals, while overhead passed 
clouds of pigeons, turkeys, geese, and quail ; and in the seas, 
lakes, and rivers were myriads of edible fishes. Land, 
sea and sky, forest and prairie, offered seemingly exhaust- 
less supplies to the scattered millions of early Americans. 

Beneath the deserts of forest and prairie lay an equal 
bounty. There were hundreds of thousands of square 
miles of deposits of coal and iron. In gold, silver^ lead, 

23 



24 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

zinc, in building stone, phosphates, and salt, in many other 
minerals and metals, the country abounded. These buried 
treasures were not for the unseeing eyes of the first gener- 
ations. It was the forest which fed and warmed and housed 
them, which sheltered them from the Indians, and held 
out its constant lure. 

In grandeur the march of the pioneers into the preg- 
nant forest compares with those multitudinous outpour- 
ings of northern Barbarians which overturned Rome. 
The movement was peaceful, continuous, resistless. Wher- 
ever the pioneer pressed, boundaries gave way. Napoleon 
sold a magnificent empire to the young Republic, and vast 
territories were stolen from feeble and distracted Mexico. 
Not until it reached the impassable ocean did the west- 
ward movement stop. To-day the peaceful conquest 
moves northwest into the wheat lands of Saskatchewan. 
It is all the same process, the overflow of a vigorous, fertile 
race into an empty, fertile land. 

It was this emptiness of the wide land which impressed 
upon the new nation its essentially industrial character. 
Spain became martial through eight centuries of warfare 
against the Moors ; the ancient Jews became militant 
because, to win the Promised Land, they were forced to 
slay root and branch. To the Americans such warlike 
qualities were not essential. A few hundred thousand 
Indians could not withstand the prolific invaders. The 
aborigines were not so much conquered as overawed. They 
were literally crowded out by men who, themselves waste- 
ful, yet made a better use of the land. The plow, not 
the rifle, vanquished the Indian. 

We must pause to survey this conquest of the continent 
because it has entrained a series of developments which 
still vitally affect American life. To-day we cannot tear 
down a slum, regulate a corporation, or establish a national 
educational system, we cannot attack either industrial 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 25 

oligarchy or political corruption, without coming into con- 
tact with the economic, political, and psychological after 
effects of the conquest. What our land is, what our state 
is, what we are, our present problems and our present hopes, 
are largely traceable to the hasty occupation of the con- 
tinent, and to the rapid material development of the nation 
w^hich the conquest visualized. 

What was the impelling cause of this vast, harmonious 
movement? What inspired the men who built the new 
West? 

It is naive to believe that all these men were inspired by 
a concerted desire to work out a national destiny. Their 
motive was more personal. Nor may we ascribe the move- 
ment to a disinterested love of adventure. Adventure means 
money. Ordinary men do not break home ties, go forth into a 
trackless wild or into a new, crude community, do not put 
their lives, still less their permanent comfort, to the touch 
without hope of money, gold, farms, a free economic life. 
The exceptions do not disprove the rule. The great mi- 
grations of history have been economic. 

In the business, labor, and property conditions of the East 
of America, as in the unparalleled offerings of the West, 
we must seek the cause of the Western movement. It 
might seem that the vast territory east of the Appala- 
chians should have sufficed for the needs of its sparse popu- 
lations. In 1790 there were far fewer people in all the 
United States than in New York City to-day; in 1820 
the whole population, white, red, and black, on both sides 
of the mountains was but little greater than the present 
population of New York State. Had the early Americans 
been engaged in manufacturing, commerce, and intensive 
agriculture, there would have been little apparent incentive 
to a westward migration. 

Such were not the conditions. By an adverse policy of 
the British government, manufacturing had been restricted 



26 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

during the colonial period, and after 1815 it was again 
injured by the competition of the better equipped Eng- 
lish factories. Farming, in America, even according to the 
then European standards, was superficial and ineffectual. 
The tools were rude ; the plow was essentially that which 
Herodotus had seen in Egypt. The farmers were neither 
ambitious nor scientific. The one-crop system prevailed, 
fertilizers were unused, and the land was subjected to the 
most exhausting tillage. An ineffectual national produc- 
tion and a rapidly increasing population^ forced increasing 
numbers of Americans across the mountains. 

So long as commerce offered an alternative, Americans 
were loath to move westward. A few years after Wash- 
ington's inauguration, Europe became embroiled in a series 
of wars which lasted a generation. The slaughter in the 
East was a golden opportunity to the poor Western Re- 
public. America turned its back upon the forest and ex- 
panded toward the sea. She became the audacious blockade- 
runner, the shrewd trader, who stuck to business while 
competitors quarreled. American fleets filled the seas, 
scattered the Mediterranean pirates, carried food to Eng- 
land, ministered to Bonaparte, and engaged in the lucra- 
tive, horrific slave trade. Finally warring England and 
France joined hands to assail our rising commerce. The 
maritime monopoly of America ceased. Our ships lay 
idle in the harbors, and grass grew in the Salem streets.^ 

Thereafter the undivided energies of Americans turned 
westward. The cession of Louisiana in 1803 had brought 
under the American flag distant lands less known than are 
to-day the hiddenmost recesses of Central Africa. Into 

* Prior to the flood of immigration which began in 1820, the white popu- 
lation was doubling every twenty-two or twenty-three years, and the slave 
population was growing almost as rapidly. 

2 American commerce received so great a setback through the French 
and English policies, the American Embargo, and the War of 1812, that 
the tonnage of American vessels was less in 1830 than in 1800. 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 27 

the Western territory there poured, after 1815, increasing 
numbers of hardy adventurers. Turnpikes were built 
between the ocean and the Appalachians. The steam- 
boat, launched on the Hudson, was transported to the 
Western rivers, and carried passengers from Pittsburg and 
Cincinnati to St. Louis and New Orleans. The opening 
of the Erie Canal in 1825 connected the Great Lakes with 
the Atlantic Ocean, while in the early years of the fourth 
decade the newly invented railroads began to open up 
lands inaccessible by water. The forests of the North- 
west Territory went down before ax and pyre. Clear- 
ings were made, towns grew up, and Territories, and later 
States, were formed. The population of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin increased from 50,000 in 
1800 to 3,000,000 in 1840. The Appalachian barrier had 
been turned. The country lay open to the Rockies. 

The building of the West was hastened by the wasting of 
the East. Labor being scarce and land plenty, it seemed 
extravagant not to waste. Beyond his tumble-down fences 
the Eastern cultivator saw other boundless farms. The 
New Englander profitably ruined his land and migrated 
to Ohio and Illinois. The Georgian moved with the spoils 
of his ravished acres to the cheaper and more fertile acres 
of Alabama and Mississippi. In the South both waste and 
migration were incited by the ignorance, apathy, and mo- 
bility of the slave. The Southern planter transported his 
valuable human property easily and cheaply, and these 
transitions carried slavery and cotton beyond the Missis- 
sippi. The impact of ''King Cotton" drove the Mexi- 
cans across the Rio Grande, and Texas and Arkansas were 
settled, while in many parts of the Southeast decayed 
buildings and overgrown lands were all that remained of 
once prosperous plantations. The center of population 
moved westward. The Southwest, shipping its one *^ pay- 
crop," cotton, to Liverpool and New York, drew its corn 



28 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

and bacon from the Northwest, which in turn bought 
plows, railroad tracks, and other manufactured products 
from the East. The North Atlantic and Middle States 
went over to manufacturing; the nation's mineral re- 
sources began to be tapped; and the country, about the 
year 1840, emerged from its former poverty and sparse- 
ness of population into an era of exuberant prosperity. 

To this prosperity and to the almost intentionally waste- 
ful exploitation of resources, two new factors contributed, 
the railroad and migration. The railroad, bringing the 
virgin farm of the West nearer to the wasteful farmer of 
the East, removed the last penalty from the murdering of 
the soil. The most adventurous and resilient among 
Americans, men who in still earlier days would have en- 
gaged in whaling or the desperate fur trade, turned their 
energies into the construction of railways. Against the 
urgent cry for transportation, voiced by the upgrow- 
ing nation, nothing could stand. Peculation, speculation, 
force, fraud, genius, and courage, — all went into the new 
lines. Tracks were laid upon the smooth prairie into a 
land uninhabited. The freight and passengers built the 
road that carried them. Wooden bridges, desperately 
flimsy, made subsequent iron bridges possible, as iron 
bridges later paid for steel and stone bridges. Where the 
iron rail went, pioneer and settler followed, and cities — 
strident boom towns, born of an insane optimism — sprang 
up in swamps and forests. The railroads, like their chil- 
dren, the new communities, were a law unto themselves. 
The savage little lines, fighting for life with tooth and claw, 
running anywhere and everjrwhere, cutting, rebating, over- 
charging, were graduall}^ forced into bigger combinations of 
continuous railroad, which also cut, and rebated, and over- 
charged, and fought tooth and claw. Parallel ^'strike" lines 
arose, and the struggle for money and land waxed fiercer 
and fiercer; while pregnant America poured forth ever new 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 29 

torrents of wealth, and men wasted and garnered and 
laughed and fought, as the continent was conquered. 

While the American pioneers were crossing the first 
range of mountains, a reserve army was moving to their 
assistance from the fecund lands of western Europe. These 
men too were adventurers, giving up home and friends 
for money, food, and a job. The voyage was hard. Suc- 
cess depended upon an ability to survive in the ruthless, 
fertile struggle of American life. From 1820 on, immi- 
gration grew rapidly, and after the bad crops of the 
late forties, the Irish Famine of 1846, and the unsuccess- 
ful German revolution of 1848, millions of men poured 
into the Western Republic.^ The cities, which were grow- 
ing up like weeds, attracted the plastic Irishman, while 
the Germans swept over the new lands of the West. Here, 
beyond the Wabash, the immigrants found an unforested 
prairie, where, though wood and water often lacked, prog- 
ress was easier. The ^^ prairie breaker,'^ with his team 
and plow, turned the soil, and farms sprang up instanta- 
neously. Often the immigrants did not settle on virgin 
territory, but bought from pioneers, who, after disposing 
of their log cabins and half-burned woods, ^'cleared out 
for the New Purchase." The incoming swarms of immi- 
grants pushed the pioneer ever farther west. 

Settlement, railroad building, and immigration were in 
their turn incited by a heedless, precipitate disposal of the 
public lands. Originally conceived as a common property 
to be sold for the extinguishment of the national debt, the 
public domain came to be regarded as an infinite checker- 
board of future farms, to be put into the possession of in- 
dividual settlers as expeditiously as possible. The prices 
of agricultural and mineral lands were reduced ; credit 

1 From 1821 to 1840, 742,564 immigrants arrived ; from 1841 to 1860 
th» number was 4,311,465, of whom over two thirds were Irish and Ger- 
mans. 



30 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

was, for a time, extended to every one; a succession ol 
' temporary ^' statutes permitted preemption; and finally 
the Homestead Law of 1862, and certain ill-advised amend- 
ments and complements thereto, let down all bars, and 
gave access to the land without effective guarantee of 
permanent settlement. These methods stimulated the cra- 
ziest excesses of land speculation and the crassest inequal- 
ities, but they also expedited settlement. An over generous 
land policy, fashioned by corrupt Congresses and adminis- 
tered by corrupt officials, succeeded, at the expense of all 
future generations, in hastening the already rapid conquest 
of the American continent. 

Uninterruptedly the westward course of the army of 
settlement took its way. The Mormons, persecuted in 
the East, turned the deserts of Utah into gardens. The 
cry of ^'gold" arose in California, and, dropping their 
plows and lathes, men rushed madly to the Pacific. Over 
the desolate, arid wastes, around the Cape, across the 
narrowing continent at Panama, came the gold hunters. 
Farmers, truck gardeners, and peddler merchants followed, 
and a new, rash, gambling civilization arose on the lands 
of the stately Spaniards. The westward movement, halted 
by the belief in a great American Desert, stretched out two 
long, thin trails to New Mexico and Oregon. Then Kan- 
sas and Nebraska were opened, and fierce men from North 
and South came to fight for farms and to decide there the 
issue of slavery. For, while America grew in its rapid, 
disorganized way, sprawling over a -continent, a nation 
all arms and legs and no body, the great disruption threat- 
ened. Slaveholders and single-handed pioneers struggled 
for the territories, for the continent of America. Forty 
years of compromises and evasions had brought the nation 
to the " Irrepressible Conflict." 

The seventh decade decided the question whether the 
continent wrested from nature should pertain to a single 



4 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 31 

nation, or to a group of clashing nations, representing 
opposing ideals. The railroad decided the battle and 
unified the nation and its territory. Backed by the rail- 
road, the Northern armies poured down from East and 
West and overcame the heroic resistance of the South. 
At last the North and South, estranged for generations, 
were united in a nation which knew no dividing line. Four 
years later, on the 10th of May, 1869, a golden spike was 
driven into the connecting rails of the Union Pacific Rail- 
road, and the two oceans were united by a rod of steel. 
The continent was conquered. 

The land had been covered. The pubUc domain, opened 
by the homestead laws, lavished upon railroad corporations, 
despoiled by timber thieves, by mineral reserve exploiters, 
and by adventurers, honest and dishonest, showed signs of 
depletion.^ When, in 1889, Oklahoma was opened for set- 
tlement, the overwhelming rush of land-hungry men showed 
that the patrimony of the country was lessened. ^ The 
processes of exploitation and waste were extended to min- 
eral, timber, and swamp lands, and were aided by machin- 
ery, which during the century had revolutionized indus- 
try and now lent its immense powers to the spoilers of the 
nation. Trees were no longer brought down by the ax, 
but vast forests were destroyed by machinery with the 
rapidity of fire. Iron was shoveled by steam out of the 
unprotecting hills. The steam drill invaded the coalpit, 
and wonderful inventions of warfare were turned against 
the disappearing fauna of the continent. 

Our frontier, the actual physical boundary of the coun- 

1 According to the report of the Public Lands Commission of 1905, al- 
most one billion acres (967,667,449) had been disposed of in the United 
States (excluding Alaska) up to July 1, 1904. Of this, 114,502,528 acres 
were forests reserves, and over 162,000,000 acres were Indian lands and 
school and other grants to States and Temtories. 

2 On the first day of entry more than fifty thousand people entered to 
occupy the land. 



32 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

try, had been attained. For the man who had gbdled the 
trees and built log cabins in Tennessee or Ohio, there was 
no chance in newly acquired lands in Pacific and Caribbean. 
The westward wave of migration, checked but still unspent, 
turned back upon itself. The driving force, the fierce 
resistless momentum, remained, but there was nothing 
against which to strike. The alkali lands of the silent 
desert, the cloudless blue skies of arid America, laughed at 
the plow and the harrow and the earnest, searching glances 
of the home builders. The Pacific Ocean, stretching out 
to the thronged coasts of China, buried the hopes of those 
who for generations had conquered the continent. The 
occupation of America seemed gone. 

It was not that there were no virgin lands, no unused 
mines, no primeval forests. All these there were, but they 
were preempted. Appropriation, not use, had cornered 
the opportunities. The railroads alone had received over 
a hundred million acres, which they now held at their use 
and pleasure. From the beginning, the pioneer had taken 
what he could and had held what he took. The gigantic 
railroad, with a thousand fold greater power, had done but 
the same. Farseeing corporations of enormous reserve 
strength had grabbed legally and illegally, had seized 
strategic positions, had secured themselves against the time 
when tens of millions of homeless men would press upon 
the no longer boundless, but strictly bounded, territory. 

While the pioneer had struggled with ax and plow 
against the resistance of trees and soil, a silent change had 
taken place behind him. Machinery had become highly 
specialized and had conquered the world ; competition 
had become tempered by combination. Railroads had 
become trunk lines, transcontinental systems, and finally 
amalgamations of systems. The trust had arisen. The 
trust had tramped into the disordered ring of life as the 
pioneer had forced his way into the forest. In pioneering 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 33 

itself, once the province of the individual man, in the dis- 
covery, appropriation, and exploitation of resources, the 
trust had excelled as it excelled in the refining of oil and 
the making of steel. 

The old style pioneer, the log cabin man, the placer 
miner, had been met and held off by his brother of a more 
modern type. The new pioneer might be a soft-handed 
gentleman, with a taste for intrigue and percentages, and 
as ignorant of woodcraft as was Daniel Boone of deben- 
ture bonds. Nevertheless the same adventurous, getting 
spirit which had driven and lured the frontiersman into 
the forest now attracted the like-minded promoter into 
the similar business of wholesale preemption. Like the 
pioneer, though on a much greater scale, the promoter 
preempted ; like the pioneer, though on a much greater 
scale, he wasted, ravaged, and laid fire ; like the pioneer, 
though on a much greater scale, he built for himself and 
for the nation. Ruthless, greedy, imaginative, he erected, 
by fair means or foul, by his own brains and the tribu- 
tary science of the world, an edifice overpowering in its 
immensity. 

Against that edifice, against the preemption of financier 
and trust builder, the naked hands of the pioneer could 
avail nothing. His self-rehant individualism, formerly 
the mainspring of his strength, now reduced him to impo- 
tence. Preemption had grown large and prevented pre- 
emption. Individualism, fattened on reserve money 
strength, inspired by an avid appetite for gain, directed 
by science, system, and the subtlety of invention, had ren- 
dered individualism abortive. The new preemptor cir- 
cled his appropriations with excluding fences far more 
effective than those of the early pioneer. About his prop- 
erty, however gained, were legal grants, and legal con- 
firmations, statutes of limitation, corrupt poHtical organi- 
zations, phant judges, and the laws and the constitutions 



34 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of the States and of the United States. The old pioneer 
was warned off the farm, warned off the cattle range, warned 
off the forests, warned off the mines. Discouraged, as 
though bewildered by the abortion of a primal instinct, 
the pioneer, the typical American, tmrned back from the 
physical frontier to lose himself in the city, in the wilder- 
ness of opportunities of the city. 

While the pioneer was felHng the forest, the city had 
been growing apace. The city, which all over the world 
was becoming the new home of civiUzation, had developed in 
America even more rapidly than elsewhere. It grew with 
the progress of the pioneers ; it grew even faster after the 
pioneer period ended. As the supply of free Western farms 
ceased, as the settlers, with no further place to go, began 
to exploit what they had, the alternative which the fron- 
tier once offered to the city disappeared. The progress 
of agriculture enabled one farmer to perform what two 
had performed before, and the surplus rm-al population 
moved to the upgrowing cities. The very isolation of 
the farm, with its sharp limitation of possibilities, sent 
the most energetic boys to the cities. The immigrants, 
finding the new lands preempted, remained at the ports 
of entry. The new opportunities, the chances which the 
pioneer had sought among the trees, on the plains, or in 
the sands of Cahfornia's rivers, were now sought in the 
mysterious, congested, surcharged fife of the city. 

Here the pioneer met a new frontier. The streets of 
the cities were underlaid with networks of telephone wires, 
electric railway conduits and privately owned water 
mains, so that no new individual or company could com- 
pete. The best city sites, those adapted for depart- 
ment stores, office buildings, and fashionable residences, 
were in the hands of men who held them at enormous 
prices. The road to political preference in the city lay 
through bosses who had preempted the strategic points of 



THE CONQUEST OF THE CONTINENT 35 

the city control, or through financiers who controlled the 
bosses. 

Everywhere the pregmptor had been. The city, con- 
ceived in an individualistic society and composed of men 
who minded their own business and nothing else, had grown 
up hke one of its own ragged newsboys, untended, reck- 
less, and weak. The preemptors, divided in grabbing, were 
united in holding. The politicians exploited the apathy 
of the pubHc, and the financier exploited the cupidity of 
the politician. '^Deals'' and ^'jobs" had become vested 
rights in perpetual franchises, and what had been obtained 
by foul means was held by fair. Our legal traditions and 
our most sacred political institutions had sanctified the end, 
though they abhorred the means, and a midnight fran- 
chise grab was crowned with the sanction of the Consti- 
tution of the United States. And so in the city, as on the 
wide-stretching continent, men had preempted and bribed 
and stolen and bought in good faith, until preemption pre- 
cluded preemption and grabbing put a stop to grabbing. 
The chances of the city, like the chances of the forest, 
became circumscribed. The city, like the country, was 
preempted. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

THE westward march of the pioneer gave to Americans 
a psychological twist which was to hinder the develop- 
ment of a sociahzed democracy. The open continent in- 
toxicated the American. It gave him an enlarged view of 
self. It dwarfed the common spirit. It made the American 
mind a little sovereignty of its own, acknowledging no alle- 
giances and but few obligations. It created an individual- 
ism, self-confident, short-sighted, lawless, doomed in the 
end to defeat itself, as the boundless opportunities which 
gave it birth became at last circumscribed. 

Based though this individualism was upon the environ- 
ment of the American, it was also in part an intellectual 
heritage. National character depends upon the past as 
upon the present. Had America been settled by Lapland- 
ers, equatorial Negroes, Spaniards, Venetians, or Greeks, 
our civilization would have developed differently. We can- 
not understand the problems of to-day, nor foresee the solu- 
tions of to-morrow, without knowing something of the minds 
of the middle-class Englishmen who came to Massachusetts 
in the seventeenth century. 

The roots of these men's characters ran deep into the soil 
of dead centuries. The Pilgrim Fathers imported traditions 
formed millenniums before by Angles and Saxons in the 
Baltic dunes. The history of England, from the Heptarchy 
to James the First, was part of their intellectual equipment. 
In their beliefs and prejudices might be traced the slow polit- 
ical and legal development of England, the stiffness and 
harshness of the common law, the tenacious middle-class 

36 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 37 

traditions of the towns, the democratizing, individuahzing 
effects of Reformation and Dissent. The early spirit, 
strong, narrow, pious, became diluted as the Puritan stream 
flowed into the ocean of English America. Even in dilu- 
tion, however, it preserved, and to this day preserves, much 
of its individuaUstic, uncompromising, reforming quaUty. 

Another type of man Hved in Virginia, and men of still 
different caUber were to settle Maryland, Pennsylvania, and 
Georgia. The Dutch in New York, the Swedes in Pennsyl- 
vania, the French Huguenots in the South, had still less in 
common with the men who plowed New England's rocks. 
But the Puritans prevailed. Though the Carolinian plan- 
tation owner scorned the Connecticut divine, though the 
wealthy and populous South overshadowed New England 
and New York, though Virginia, not Massachusetts, be- 
came the mother of Presidents, it was in the North that the 
spirit of the nation was evolved. 

That spirit was necessarily individuaUstic. The colo- 
nists were more self-reliant than even the original, self- 
reliant British stock, since, broadly speaking, only selected 
men essayed the ocean journey. No aid from a hostile? 
Stuart-ruled England could reach the colonist, who, sepa- 
rated from his neighbors by miles of treacherous forest, was 
compelled to rely upon himself. With the aid of his family, 
he plowed his acres, shot his game, caught his fish, made 
his soap and candles, dressed and cured his leather, spun 
and wove, did his own carpentering, and sometimes his own 
smithing. He made what he ate, wore, and lived in, and 
he made and held his own opinions. His philosophy was 
that of the lonely, self-contained farmhouse. 

When, after the wars with England and her Indian alhes, 
the back country was opened, and the colonists, leaving 
behind sea and civilization, settled their farms in the virgin 
forest, a new era opened for American individualism. So 
long as the settlers had lived on the fringe of America, like 



38 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

shipwrecked sailors clinging to the barren coast of a lavish 
land, they had preserved some of their old traditions. What 
revolutionized them was their march into the continent, 
the erection of a mountain barrier between them and Europe. 
As the continent was transformed by the settlers, so in 
turn the settlers were transformed by the continent. It 
was the continent that created the typical individualistic 
American spirit. 

That influence was not the mere sight of beautiful rivers 
and primeval forests. Men are affected wonderfully httle 
by scenery and wonderfully much by considerations of 
bread and butter. West of the mountains, individuahsm 
was rooted in the soil. All the elements of the trans- 
Appalachian hfe, the free movement, the initial character 
of the inhabitants, the contemporaneous political theories, 
the cross currents of immigrant nations — all aided in the 
development of this national characteristic. On the fertile 
lands along the Ohio and Mississippi, as on the unforested 
prairies beyond, success could be attained by the individual, 
reenforced by the occasional reciprocal assistance of his 
neighbors. No great irrigation projects were needed, such 
as made the Mormons a semicomLmunistic group and are 
perhaps destined to socialize the future settlers of arid 
America ; and no scarcity of land and no fear of foreign in- 
vasion forced the people into villages like those of continen- 
tal Europe, where all peasants must act in the common in- 
terest. The scattering of so small a population over so large 
an area led to an unprecedented exaggeration of the centrif- 
ugal forces of society. The individual stood alone. 

The most representative type of this American individual- 
ism was the pioneer. It was he who typified the expansive 
force of American civilization in the rarefied American con- 
tinent. This backwoodsman, overburdened with land, 
clamored for more land, for Louisiana and Texas, for New 
Mexico and California, for Oregon to fifty-four-forty. His 



J 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 39 

almost savage individualism triumphed over forest, swamps, 
malaria, privation, and solitude. It transformed his rough 
log cabin into a ''castle" and his vague, far-reaching land 
and his roaming swine into ''property." It showed itself 
in a sense of complete self-containment and in a churlish 
though free hospitality. Ignorant, dirty, often drunken, 
frequently brutal, as some of these "solitaries" were, they 
nevertheless possessed a certain large dignity not unUke 
that of the Hebrew shepherds. Forever displaced by 
steadier and more industrious beneficiaries of his adventure, 
this marginal man, with his eyes ever towards the West, 
loomed up large in the imagination of Americans, and cast 
his shadow backwards over the filling land and its cities, 
over even the national Congress assembled at Washington. 

The self-reliant, aggressive individualism of the pioneer 
was also the spirit of the American factory builder, town 
boomer, railroad wrecker, promoter, trust manipulator, and 
a long line of spectacularly successful industrial leaders. 
Dm-ing the Conquest of the American Continent there was 
developing in Europe, as a result of changed economic con- 
ditions, a keen, assertive, individualistic captain of industry. 
The Oldham cotton manufacturers, like the colliery pro- 
prietors of Lancashire, Belgium, and France, developed 
qualities similar to those of Americans. In the Western 
land, however, individualism was a national, not a class, 
characteristic. The continent was one enormous workshop, 
and it was new, not like the scarred European continent, 
which had been the burying ground for a century of cen- 
turies of fighting, starving populations. In America, except 
the slave (the whipping boy of civilization), all were imbued 
with something of the spirit that in Europe pertained to a 
few. 

It was not that the American industrial leaders imitated 
the pioneer, but that they were subject to conditions simi- 
lar to his. Everywhere in America there was a low external 



40 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

pressure, which resulted in an inflation of individualities. 
The pioneer acted for himself because there were no others ; 
he knew no law because he knew no society. So, with the 
others, the vastness of the land compared to the fewness of 
the people, the richness of the land compared to the labor of 
the people, induced an instinctive taking, an instinctive 
wasting, a sense of magnificence, a toleration of others (with 
whom there was so much to share), and a lawless, tradition- 
less exploitation of boundless resources according to the will 
and ideas of each. 

American individualism showed itself in a certain mag- 
nificence, which to this day affects the life of the nation. 
The American, hke a young heir, developed a confused sense 
of abounding wealth. He did not mind waste, for he throve 
while wasting with both hands. If the racked lands re- 
verted to desert, if men despoiled and politicians stole, if 
fires ravaged forest and city, was he not, fortunate mortal, 
possessor of a continent ? He derided small gains and petty 
savings. Small gains were for small men. The penny- 
wisdom, which in Europe has built up great cooperative 
stores, he esteemed but as the beggarly expedient of ^'pau- 
per labor." 

This '^magnificence" revealed itself in ways ludicrous 
and grandiose; in lavish gratuities, disproportionate to 
services ; in the unbelievable — yet believed — prophecies 
of innumerable Mulberry Sellerses ; in a contempt for pen- 
nies, nickels, and ' ' shinplaster " currency. More than in 
anything else it showed itself in American bragging. The 
nation, its resources, excellences, and virtues were colossal, 
continental. Even its vices were boundless, and, therefore, 
admirable. This magnificence invaded the arid intellec- 
tual life of America. It inspired our perfervid oratory. 
It was of the very essence of our humor, with its broad 
continental exaggerations, and its rollicking, cascading con- 
trasts, like that between the prairies of Nebraska and the 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 41 

turbulent Falls of Niagara. To the Illinois farmer, the 
Colorado prospector, the California gambler, the New York 
banker, to the ''magnificent" rank and file of America,— 
all of them individualists, — everything was bigness, wast- 
ing, getting, and a theme for a crude, touching magnilo- 
quence. 

Another side of this individualism was an ilhmitable, 
supreme, categorical optimism. As the wasted lands led 
to new lands, as the ravaged forests led to new forests, as 
the ruined man rose again richer than before, a feeling spread 
that all was well with America, that nothing could stay the 
ultimate success of individual or nation. Evils there were, 
but the continent was large, movement easy, and what 
could not be cured need not be endured. The discontented 
Easterner went West and prospered ; the discontented immi- 
grant fared better than he had hoped. Economic crises 
gave way to newer prosperity. There was never a famine 
in the land, for the land was a continent, and one crop made 
up the deficiency of another. Invention, scientific discov- 
eries, improved transportation, opened the continent ever 
wider, and the optimism of America clung with invincible 
credulity to a beUef in the inevitableness of progress. The 
continent, moreover, made all the good come true, and the 
man who believed — with or without reason — was not dis- 
appointed in his predictions. Faith in America, faith in one^s 
self, faith in the ultimate good sense of the people, became 
a creed; the cautious maxims of poverty-bred generations 
were belied. In America a rolling stone did gather moss; 
in America a penny saved was often a dollar lost. ''Waste 
not, want not" meant nothing to a generation of wealth- 
getting wasters, while "nothing venture, nothing lose" was 
not so true as its contrary. 

This optimism — then as now — closed the ears of the 
people to all warnings. The dissenter, the ever-falsified 
prophet of evil; was derided. Again and again, for one 



42 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

cause or another, for the breaking of economic laws or of 
the tabled Commandments of God, America, it was pre- 
dicted, would shatter, and be one with Nineveh and Troy. 
America never shattered. Despite political corruption and 
absurd legislation, despite an extravagance of errors that 
would have doomed another nation, the ralljdng continent 
and the invincible buoyancy of the American spirit tri- 
umphed. Supply preceded demand and created demand. 
Confidence, not caution, was the law of business. 

A corollary of American optimism was tolerance. This 
tolerance, which was half-part indifference, extended to 
slavery, slums, piratical business, and poHtical corruption. 
The presence on the continent of a great community of un- 
like, free, and nominally equal men stimulated this toleration, 
as did also the fluidity of American life, the facile escape 
from local evil conditions, the easy association in business 
and society of diverse elements, and the free exchange of 
goods and ideas between different sections. Prosperity, too^ 
made for tolerance. To a well-fed, well-housed, suitably 
mated man, few beliefs, opinions, or prejudices are intoler- 
able; and the ready humor of America, tinged with the joy 
of mere well-being, was both an antidote and an alternative 
to intolerance. 

The potential success inhering in all men, the chance that 
even the unfortunate might eventually triumph, widened 
further the apphcation of tolerance. The ^' crank" must be 
humored because his crazy device might transform an in- 
dustry. The ragged and ungrammatical visionary might 
found a religion or an empire ; the log sphtter might become 
Chief Executive. The immigrants — German, Irishman, and 
Swede — were tolerated, because through this very toleration 
these people 'Von out," and lost their alien qualities in 
the dissolving bath of American prosperity. The continent 
was big enough for wise and foolish, good and bad. Except- 
ing always the Negro — the helot of North and South — 






THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 43 

only the polygamist and the atheist were held outside the 
pale. Especially the atheist, for it behooved all men to 
beheve in a Creator who had fashioned the continent and 
reserved it for the eleventh-hour American. 

The continent made us a ^^ practical" people. We judged 
policies by ''results" ; by immediate, visible, reahzable 
results. We were not thorough. In America, it did not 
pay to be thorough. We did not think things out. We 
did not generahze. Our pohtical and economic hfe appeared 
as a disconnected succession of suddenly arising problems, 
each of which was to be singly met — or singly avoided. 
We did not determine on definite long-time policies. To 
the future — that beneficent but unknowable ally of Amer- 
ica — we intrusted the problems of the future. America 
lived under the dominion of the immediate. The Ameri- 
cans were a ''practical" people. 

The crass, unbounded individualism of the practical Ameri- 
can found its highest expression in private business and the 
quest of money. Although Americans were ideahstic, and 
even sentimental, although the nation, sympathetic and 
generous, gave to all alien causes which appealed to the 
common mind, nevertheless it was with a certain justice 
that America was called the Land of Dollars. The dollar 
was omnipotent. Traditions being weak, classes inchoate, 
and the state inactive, the individual in measuring his suc- 
cess accepted this only available standard. The very fluid- 
ity of the nebulous communities, the ease with which one 
man became successively laborer, teacher, farmer, lawyer, 
soldier, legislator, and banker, and the prevalence of the 
creed that any man could do anything, tended to reduce all 
the inequalities of life to the one equality of the dollar. 

It was, moreover, a useful and essential standard, for it 
was the dollar, not the title of nobility, or the university 
degree, that could conquer the land. The continent and 
its conquest fused with the conception of the dollar, and the 



44 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

possession of money was prima facie evidence of a man's 
usefulness to society. There was no cringing to gold, for 
all had it prospectively. But there was respect for it, since 
each man worshiped in the millionaire the apotheosis of 
his individualistic self. 

American individuahsm, apphed to business, explained 
all our then economic arrangements and all our business 
methods and traditions. Individualism, run riot and re- 
joicing in its own excesses, led to a veritable pay streak 
theory of business. The American followed the one lead, 
raised the one crop, worked the one vein, cut the best trees, 
took everywhere the cream of the cream. In a search for 
dollars in a country where a dollar to-day was worth ten 
to-morrow, there was no wisdom in working poor soils, in 
preserving fertility, in gathering coal from culm heaps, in 
securing by-products, or in working for the permanence or 
salvation of machinery that could be '^scrapped," of work- 
men who could be replaced, or of properties which could be 
dupUcated. The American shipbuilder built ships to sail, 
not to last. Factories and cities were built for immediate 
profit, like the cheap shanties of a moving gang of PoHsh 
railroad laborers. The six-story house was dismantled to 
build the twenty-story skyscraper. Naturally, during the 
brief life of these temporary elements of a permanent civih- 
zation, each was worked to its utmost capacity. Intensity 
became the law of business. The night was made ''joint 
laborer with the day," and in a few years of feverish activity 
relays of highly paid workmen got out of a new machine its 
full value. In the North the free workers were lured into 
intense labor and excessive overtime ; in the South, on some 
of the plantations of Louisiana, it was found profitable to 
work off a stock of negroes once every seven years, and to 
buy a new set with the proceeds of the cane. As for the 
property — the farm, mine, mill, railroad — the goose was 
worth less than the golden egg. 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 45 

The sequence of such untrammeled individuaHsm was a 
brutally unprincipled code of business morals. Every man 
was presumed capable of playing his own game. The ten- 
derfoot from the East was expected to know a ranch when 
he saw one. If a simple-minded man bought a broken- 
winded horse, a salted gold mine, a city lot in Lake Michigan, 
or the mythical wooden nutmeg, it was his lookout. If he 
bought sand in his sugar, water in his milk, chicory in his 
coffee, or chalk in his bread, he had no redress. He could 
not appeal to a spiritless, futile law, cramped like a Chinese 
foot; he could not protest to a community which would 
have laughed at the fool and his folly. The buyer did what 
some men do when they receive a counterfeit dollar. He 
kept silent, and passed it on. 

Upon competitors, the individualist turned the same bat- 
teries. Competition, the fetish of America, was largely un- 
regulated by public opinion. The spirit of haggling was 
everywhere, in the horse trades of country fairs, the bar- 
gainings of itinerant peddlers, the real estate transactions 
of boom cities. The competitive spirit ran high among 
towns offering rival locations to a prospective railroad, and 
among the railroads themselves, which during rate wars 
might carry the passenger free and give him a bonus. The 
little country newspapers carried a competition for sub- 
scribers into their fierce editorial columns, and thousands 
of lawyers, doctors, and dentists, throwing aside professional 
restraints, launched into lurid advertising of competitive 
claims. In the relentless struggle for patronage, bribery, 
treating, false pretense, the buying off of rivals' agents, the 
damaging of rivals' wares, ingenious chicanery of all sorts, 
entered into the game. Competition was war, and in war 
all was fair. 

The apotheosis of American individualism was the rebate. 
It was the individualistic, higgUng spirit carried to its logi- 
cal conclusion. It was a negation of the public character 



46 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

and public responsibilities of railroads, and an assertion of 
the principle that each man might be permitted, here as 
elsewhere, to make the best bargain possible, open or secret, 
and the devil take the hindmost. 

In the early days a man injured by a rebate to a rival did 
not waste time deploring the demoralization of business. 
He passed the counterfeit dollar along ; he secured a larger 
rebate for himself. In the eyes of that generation, a shipper 
who could not, through bribery, cajolery, intimidation, or 
bluffing, secure a rebate, was as deservedly unsuccessful as 
the manufacturer who failed to secure customers. The atti- 
tude towards the public interest in uniform railroad rates 
was summed up in the sententious phrase, ^^The public be 
damned !" 

The individualism of the American led to gambhng ; com- 
petition was gambUng. In America, as in other countries 
where the future is large and indefinite (but especially in 
America), gambling was the core of business. The continent 
offered a fortune to the lucky speculator ; the railroads car- 
ried the product, and the advertising newspaper, the words, 
of the lucky manufacturer to the farthest hamlet. There 
was no foreteUing the fancy of the public, that credulous, 
milUon-headed, miUion-mouthed monster. A man might 
spend a fortune on factories and advertising — and lose ; 
another might invent a shoe button or glove hook, or coin a 
happy advertising name for his candy, soap, or cigarette, 
and millions poured upon him. The incompetent farmer 
found zinc or oil upon his land, or was overtaken by a great 
city, so that his pigsty became worth a dozen farms. The 
easy-going man bought a few yards of ''begging" telephone 
stock and became a financial magnate. Men bought, 
luckily or unluckily, mines, stocks, great tracts of land ; they 
appealed to the God of Chance as they appealed to the silent 
continent. They placed the years of their Uves and their 
precarious fortunes upon the cast of a die, upon a future hap- 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 47 

pening — or failure to happen. America was one large 
gambling *^ joint/' where money, success, and prestige were 
the counters, and the players were old men and young 
women, pioneers and workmen, holders of trust funds, and 
little boys, devoutly reading conventionalized biographies 
of successful men. 

But it is of the essence of gambling that the few win and 
the many lose. Moreover, as the American game pro- 
gressed, the rules were changed to suit the big players. 
More and more, the little gamblers, " the pikers,'' '^ the 
lambs," staked their 'Spiles," not against the resources of 
the continent, as before, but against what was to them a 
dead uncertainty and to the big gamblers a ''sure thing." 
The big gambler used the little gambler's money ; the httle 
gambler became the stake. The chances of the game 
seemed gone, but the inveterate little gambler called, not 
for a halt, but for a ''square deal." 

It was indeed a strange psychological world in which the 
American individualist found himself, when, with the reach- 
ing of the frontier, American enterprise turned back upon 
itself. The little gambler was like the belated boy who 
dreams of a Far West of Indian trails, but finds there only 
railways and automobile roads. The individualist became 
bewildered when his familiar rebating became double-cross 
rebating, and the big shipper received both his own and the 
little shipper's rebate, and he became still more confused 
when the big shipper ended rebates by acquiring his own rail- 
roads and his own pipe lines. The individualistic American 
was dumfounded when he saw that favorable terminal 
facihties, public service franchises, and other special privi- 
leges, given to a competitor, had ended competition ; when 
he saw competition become parasitic ; when he saw the 
trusts organizing a fictitious competition against themselves. 
His psychological development had lagged decades behind 
the industrial development of the country. 



48 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The individualist could no longer rely upon his automatic 
'^unalienable rights" and his fair field and no favor. If he 
was a farmer, he could not by his own efforts secure just 
freight rates, fair elevator charges, or equitable grading. 
The individual manufacturer or merchant might at any 
time be overwhelmed through the invasion by a gigantic 
competitor of his circumscribed territory. The man who 
would not sell out to the trust might be crushed ; the work- 
ingman who would not join a strong union might be com- 
pelled. The city man could not by his sole efforts protect 
himself against fire, disease, or avoidable accident. He could 
not determine the quality of his milk or water, the hours 
that he labored, the sanitary condition of the house or flat 
in which he lived, or of the factory in which he worked. 
Individually he was impotent, and he was still an indi- 
vidualist. 

The monopolist, the big speculator, was also an individ- 
ualist, unabashed and unreconstructed. Complacently he 
sat at the gate taking a tribute which grew as millions were 
added to the population. Into his hands fell the usufruct 
of science and invention. Like Pippa he sang, '^God^s in 
His heaven; all's right with the world." The big gambler 
felt that he was an honest man, who, though not a senti- 
mentahst, had merely played ''the game." The big 
gambler could not understand the hostiUty of the httle 
gamblers. 

The little gamblers understood it no better. They too 
believed that to the victors in the industrial struggle belonged 
the spoils, and yet they had no spoils. Despite themselves 
they recognized an affinity with the big men, an identity 
in ambition and in point of view. The little individual- 
ists, to find a justification for their enmity, desperately 
sought a line of cleavage, a something which would separate 
the vicious who had succeeded from the virtuous who had 
failed. Lawbreakers accused lawbreakers; rebate takers, 



THE INDIVIDUALISTIC SPIRIT OF AMERICA 49 

rebate takers ; the man who stole an invention protested 
against the man who stole a legislature. The culminating 
evil was not the illegitimacy of the baby, but its unbabylike 
proportions. 

The very qualities bred into him by the conquest made it 
impossible for the individualist — so long as he remained an 
individualist — to solve, or even see, his economic prob- 
lems. His magnificence estopped him from complaint. 
His optimism made him still hope for the ^4uck" which 
would turn his way. He was still tolerant of abuses and 
evils, which he hoped individually to avert. The individual- 
ist was still a '^practical'' man, who despised paternaHsm, 
sociaHsm, anarchy, and governmental interference, and who 
still beUeved, in his downright practical way, that if you 
could only ''jail" a few miUionaires, the road to the con- 
tinent would again be open. The ''practical" man saw 
monopolies, but he did not see Monopoly. He saw corrupt 
poHticians, but he did not see Corruption. He saw evils, 
but he did not see Evil. 

Even to-day, the pure, unadulterated, pre-Adamitic in- 
dividualist survives. The man who feverishly buys on mar- 
gin a few shares of "Sugar" or "Smelters," who throws 
himself into a hopeless competition with a trust, who seeks 
by his own skill to escape the narrowing circle of the pre- 
emptors, is an aborted American gambler. But the man is 
changing. The little individualist, having asked for the re- 
moval of the mote of individualism from his brother's eye, 
began to discover an identical mote in his own eye. Twee- 
dledum, having accused Tweedledee, learned that they were 
Uke-minded brothers. The cure of individuaHsm was not 
individualism. 

Moreover there came to be raised other voices, — not of 
stark individualists, — and the demand went forth for re- 
construction and regulation. The Httle individualist, recog- 
nizing his individual impotence, reahzing that he did not 



50 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgment 
against his big brother, began to change his point of view. 
He no longer hoped to right all things by his individual 
efforts. He turned to the law, to the government, to the 
state. 



« 



CHAPTER V 

THE SOVEKEIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 

THE political philosophy of the " Fathers " might have 
been summed up in the phrase '' the less government, 
the better." The nation was born of a rebellion against 
King and ParUament, and, in a certain sense, against gov- 
ernment in general. At first the colonists proclaimed their 
rights as British subjects not to be taxed without representa- 
tion, but since Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds were im- 
represented, though taxed, this constitutional plea fell upon 
deaf ears. Then the colonists appealed '^ to the opinion of 
mankind,'^ on the ground that as men they had natural 
rights " to Hfe, hberty and the pursuit of happiness." Since 
" all governments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed," the Americans retained the right to sever 
their bonds with England. 

The doctrine so enunciated, though revolutionary, was 
not new. It had justified the English Revolution of 1688, 
as, later, it was to justify the French Revolution of 1789. 
It presupposed the original and residual omnipotence of the 
individual, who had been endowed by nature, or by "the 
King of Kings and Lord of all the Earth," with unahenable 
rights, which, though temporarily surrendered in a social 
compact to form a government, were still retained and might 
be enforced against an unjust or tyrannical government. 
The author of the Declaration, like many of his contempo- 
raries, was a firm behever in the right of revolution, and he 
dreaded a strong government, which might infringe the 
sacred rights of the individual. 

51 



52 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



1 



These sacred rights were life, hberty, and property,^ and 
the greatest of these was property. Property gave men the 
right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries. It permitted, 
through the payment of a bounty in war time, an escape from 
military service. It enabled the rich man to incarcerate his 
poor white neighbor for debt, or to buy his Negro neighbor 
at the auction block. The majority of offenses were infrac- 
tions of the right of property. This right, held to be in- 
vaded by the stamp tax and tea tax, made up the core of the 
unalienable rights with which man was '^endowed by his 
Creator.^' It is this emphasis upon the natural, unalien- 
able, uncontrollable right of property which molded our 
state and our law, and became the vital fact in our poUtical 
development. 

It was the philosophy of the new economic world then com- 
ing into being. In 1776, when Jefferson, a leading exponent 
of this political anarchism, was writing the Declaration of 
Independence, a quiet Scotch professor issued a famous 
treatise on the '^ Wealth of Nations." This book proclaimed 
that in economic hfe the greatest good of all resulted upon the 
whole from the unimpeded and enlightened egotism of each, 
and it proposed the restriction of state ^ activity to the nar- 
rowest Hmits. 

The tenets of Adam Smith, exaggerated and distorted by 
more passionate disciples, became the gospel of the rising 
manufacturing class in England. The men who were to 
revolutionize Great Britain with their iron foundries and 
their cotton and woolen factories wanted a free hand. 
They begged relief from oppressive state taxes, from state- 



1 In the Declaration of Independence the thu*d in this trinity of rights 
was designated "the pursuit of happiness." 

2 Where I use the word "state" in the sense of a community of persons, 
living in a circumscribed territory, under a permanent political organiza- 
tion, I spell the word with a small "s." Where States of the United 
States are intended, I use a capital "S." In quotations from other au 
thors, I do not apply this rule. 






THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 53 

granted monopolies, from laws which kept up wages. They 
wanted the unregulated power to draft into industry the 
men, women, and pauper children of agricultural England, to 
carry them to the alleys of new manufacturing towns, to keep 
them employed as many hours as ^^competition" required. 
For the sake of business the state must be dwarfed. 

In the Western world the new philosophy of a weak gov- 
ernment and a strong individual, of unalienable rights and 
non-interference, was echoed approvingly. The philosophy 
fitted in perfectly with the conditions. In those days a 
strong state could not have scientifically directed the 
exploitation of the continent, as Japan to-day is doing so 
successfully in Korea. The unknown continent could 
not have been curbed, for no legislators could have fore- 
seen the development which millions of uncontrolled ex- 
perimenters were to force. That he might go into the 
forest without his hands tied, the pioneer desired a state 
too weak to interfere, but strong enough to protect property. 
If, by the hope of a permanent gain, men were to be incited 
to conquer the wilderness, the most absolute safeguards 
to property were essential. 

So the Americans starved their state, and made of it the 
weak, sprawling, free-handed thing it became. The old 
Confederation pleased the early individualists because 
it was weak. But it was too weak to live. The Consti- 
tution also provided for a sufficiently feeble government. 
The House, Senate, and President held each a checkrein 
upon the others; the Supreme Court held one upon all; 
the State limited the Federal government; the Federal 
government, the State; v/hile between the two grew up 
vague areas of unknown jurisdiction, ^Hwilight zones," 
to which powerful evildoers repaired, as to-day gamblers 
repau" to an interstate river to avoid the jurisdiction of 
neighboring States. The state — the entire national, State, 
and municipal government — was hedged in by restrictions, 



64 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

set against itself, and weakened. In a state divided against 
itself, the individual flourished. 

Once created, the government was left to itself. It was an 
alarm-clock government, which, properly wound up, would 
run automatically and awaken the individualistic American 
at the right moment. It was a duty to vote once so often, 
and the citizens, when they possessed the right, voted. 
But it was not necessary to keep one's eyes on the govern- 
ment. The American eggs were not in that basket. 

The government grew up complaisant. It had little 
to do. The Americans did not want to fight. They de- 
sired no entangling aUiances or foreign policies. They had, 
or thought they had, no internal problems. The govern- 
ment was there, not to govern the people, but to hold them 
together. Its spirit was eternal compromise. Slavery 
was undemocratic, but the government was half free and 
half slave because the people were. The equal repre- 
sentation of the States in the Senate was undemocratic, 
but it was necessary to get the Httle States into the Union. 
The Mexican War, the Gadsden Purchase, the Alaskan Pur- 
chase, were to enlarge the continent ; the Monroe Doctrine 
was to preserve it. The goal of the government was union 
of any sort, and it attained this by giving all citizens a right 
of exploiting the continent, as an indulgent nurse succeeds 
for a time in quieting the children by acceding to all the 
demands of each. 

The Federal government being the ''business agent" 
of the pioneer, all of its policies converged upon the one 
idea of permitting the uncontrolled exploitation of natural 
resources. Infant industries were given protective tar- 
iffs; settlers and great railroad corporations were given 
public lands; inventiors were accorded patents. The free- 
dom of the national domain was conferred upon sturdy im- 
migrants, who were to aid in the Conquest of the Conti- 
nent. 



THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 55 

The government, while thus encouraging the conquest 
of the continent, scrupulously refrained, for its own part, 
from participating in the resulting gains. The nation 
largely paid for the trans-continental lines, but private 
capitalists reaped the profit, including exorbitant rates 
for the transportation of the mails. The government 
dwarfed its own unprofitable postal service rather than 
lessen the income of express companies. Tariff schedules 
were for the ^^ revenue only" of protected manufacturers. 
The whisky taxes, levied during the Civil War, were in- 
tentionally arranged to divert most of the proceeds to 
distillers and whisky speculators. During the same war, 
^Hhe boys in blue" wore expensive shoddy uniforms and 
slept under rotting shoddy blankets — all for the manufac- 
turers' profits. Rather than compete with private contrac- 
tors, the government gave out its work, buying its supplies 
at the highest market price. The State, like the nation, 
carried out a policy of subsidy to, but non-regulation of, 
private business; while the city equally abjured profits, 
and became, what it was intended to be, a weak, wasteful, 
exploited public corporation, the appanage of more vig- 
orous and powerful private corporations. So insanely 
solicitous was the government of the rights of all profit 
makers, that it offered itself for exploitation to two rival 
firms — the dominating political parties in America. 

The political party had not been contemplated by *' the 
Fathers," who objected to party or, as they called it, "fac- 
tion." The federal Constitution did not mention the word, 
and so foreign was the idea to Washington that he united 
in his Cabinet the leaders of the Federalist and Republi- 
can parties, Hamilton and Jefferson, men more divergent 
in views than were, later, Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. 
But, because of the very weakness of the government, 
because of that intended weakness which was to strengthen 
the individual, a strong, centrahzed, extra-legal power 



56 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

was inevitable. The party to some degree cemented a 
government which, otherwise, would have been too dis- 
persed for even the moderate degree of efficiency demanded. 
Moreover, the party grew naturally out of our current 
political philosophy. The American individualist wanted 
power vested in the people and not in legislators, who soon 
came to be regarded as intrinsically dishonest servants. 
But the American, with his own business to attend to, 
had neither leisure nor incUnation for the drudgery of run- 
ning the government. Consequently, the making of nomi- 
nations, the control of elections, the divisions of spoils, and 
other profitable labor came to be the work of a despised 
ruler, the professional politician. The government of the 
nation passed from legislative halls and executive cham- 
bers to the unknown meeting places of party bosses. 
The election became subordinate to the party primary; 
the voter, to the ward heeler. The party became 
supreme. 

The politician was a business man, for politics was — 
and is — business. No great body of men ever continu- 
ously devoted itself to a non-honorable service without 
the hope of monetary reward. Our officials were poorly 
paid, as though the nation showed what it thought of its 
lawgivers and administrators when it fixed their salaries. 
We did not, like the Germans, have '^ honor offices," places 
which though unpaid and even inconspicuous, are nevertheless 
so honorific that high-grade men are proud to serve. In 
America a man of leisure would rather have become Director 
of a local Charitable Society — which brought social pres- 
tige — than be Supervisor of Highways or School Commis- 
sioner. When after 1828 the old-time aristocrats went 
out, the position of politician — of caretaker of American 
liberties — was offered to whomsoever would accept. 

Politics was business, but in America it was low-grade 
business, like saloon keeping. Not offering the bound- 



THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 57 

less possibilities of other enterprises, it attracted a poorer 
quality of men. In De Tocqueville's day an American 
was not ordinarily intrusted with public business until 
he had signally failed in his private business. Never- 
theless, out of this unpromising material something could 
be made. Politics took the stones rejected by business and 
cemented them into the edifice of party. 

The party attracted its active men by the most sordid 
rewards. There were tens of thousands of places and a 
dozen prospectively grateful seekers for each office. The 
spoils system was incredibly inefficient and demoralizing, 
but by providing positions, salaries, and munitions of war, 
it strengthened the politician and fortified, while debauch- 
ing, the party. Moreover, the system was speciously demo- 
cratic and generally popular. The average man believed 
in ^'rotation in office. '' He believed that the government 
service, like the continent, should be appropriated for pri- 
vate gain. 

As population and wealth increased, the government 
had more favors to bestow, and the right to determine 
the recipient became extremely valuable. The bank, 
wanting government deposits; the newspaper, clamoring 
for city advertising; the saloon, the brothel, the gambler, 
begging protection, — were willing to pay, as was the rail- 
road wanting terminal facilities, the public service corpo- 
ration wanting franchises, or the individuals wanting tax 
remissions. 

Nor was the venality of politicians harshly condemned. 
Americans were too tolerant, too humorous, too optimistic, 
above all, too busy, to protest overmuch. We had no tra- 
ditions of public service. Moreover, the individualist 
really believed that the politician was worthy of his hire. 
As there seemed no other way of remunerating the de- 
spised but visibly useful ward heeler (who was admittedly 
**not in business for his health"), he was allowed to "graft." 



58 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The '^honest" politician grafted moderately. He ''stayed 
bought." 

The public — the great mass of individualists — came 
to regard official venality as a plague, which could be abated 
but not ended, Uke the depredations of rats, birds, and bur- 
glars. The most practical plan was for each citizen to 
attend to his own business, and restrict the amount of pub- 
lic money stolen by limiting the number and length of 
legislative sessions, on the assumption that less could be 
taken in one month than in two. The citizen was satis- 
fied if left alone — as he was ; if his cherished personal 
rights were uninvaded. He was ''magnificent" towards 
the politicians. He was quite wiHing to spend a million 
and a half for a million dollars of improvements, and he 
was wilHng to pay for his police protection as he was for 
his railroad rebate. "We pay," said the citizens, honest 
and dishonest, " but we get." 

Occasionally the politicians became so flagrantly extor- 
tionate, and legislated so patently against the public in- 
terest, that the mass of individualists forgot for a moment 
their farms and their businesses, their franchises and their 
bonds, and went in to "punish" the politician. Sometimes 
the outraged public succeeded ; sometimes it failed. In 
the long run it always failed. For after these electoral 
lynchings, the righteous indignation passed, and the vo- 
ters went back to their businesses, while the poHtician 
remained at his. 

Political corruption was ineradicable because the party 
was extra-legal, and, therefore, irresponsible. In the eyes 
of the law the men who nominated the candidates for 
of&ce were a group of citizens assembling for private pur- 
poses. The whole machinery of party, from the local pri- 
mary to the national convention, was beyond the control 
of the voter. Theoretically, he might give his ballot for 
any candidate for mayor or governor; practically, the 



THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 59 

only persons with any chance of election were the candi- 
dates of two opposing parties. In the choice of those 
candidates, the voter had no rights which the party need 
respect. In the district primary, his vote might be re- 
fused or left uncounted; he might see with his own eyes 
bribery, intimidation, and false counting. He had no re- 
dress. The honest voter, who had not even a legal right 
to go to a primary, found the public servants of the nation 
selected by the most individualistic person of all, the pro- 
fessional politician, ruling within an irresponsible party. 

No wonder the professional politician exploited his ad- 
vantage. He too had hold of a great resource. Able, 
aggressive, determined, he had fought for political con- 
trol as the pioneer had fought in the forest, or the specu- 
lator in the Stock Exchange. The city boss might begin 
as a '^bruiser'' in a district. He might serve an appren- 
ticeship at ballot stuffing, repeating, or the drudgery of 
ignoble, but important, political work. For the sake of 
his party he might even have killed his man. Such a leader 
was as straight and simple an individualist as the man who 
bought franchises or the voter who made money by evad- 
ing the building laws. The political boss recognized that 
he was not a ^'good'' man, according to his own ethical 
ideal, but he held himself equal with '' them fellows '^ of 
the Stock Exchange. He was simply in a business un- 
regulated by law — - as were many of the businesses of the 
voters. Of course, his particular business — that of run- 
ning a political party — was of paramount public impor- 
tance, but so were the unregulated businesses of many 
of the individualists who assailed him. Politics was busi- 
ness, and the poUtician was diligent in his business. 

He was also worldly-wise in his business. The poH- 
tlcian had the strength of the man who is not respected, 
of the man excluded from the top and finding his support 
at the bottom. The politician was not above his trade 



60 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

nor superior to his client. The party — the gaping tent 
of the politician — was catholic in scope. It welcomed 
millionaire and pauper, saint and sinner; in fact, it wel- 
comed the pliable sinner rather more effusively than the 
uncomfortable saint. A man who would be kicked out of a 
low saloon was welcome to a party on the ground of his vote. 
The party embraced all governments, national, State, 
territorial, city, county, township, school district. It 
appealed to all ambitions. It attracted , the man who as- 
pired to St. James or the Supreme Court and the fellow 
who begged the poor privilege of picking an occasional 
pocket. The parties, non-principled and compromising, 
as was the state, kept down problems but raised issues. 
They clothed themselves with all the passing prejudices 
of all the people. They were all things, and more, to all 
men. They became the ideal. 

It was inevitable. A man had to cling to something, 
and in America, where traditions were weak and where 
men, following their social instincts, became '^joiners,'' 
the temptation to cling to party became resistless. Nor 
was this in itself bad. The party gives cohesion and unity 
to like-minded men, and professional politicians have 
their place, as have railway conductors, letter carriers, 
and paid agents of charitable societies. But party loy- 
alty in America did not always remain subordinate to pa- 
triotism and honor, and in so far as it was an unthinking 
loyalty, it became a weapon in the hands of the more mer- 
cenary of party leaders. After 1820, this loyalty grew 
stronger through the admission of millions of immigrants, 
grateful for the franchise and for their party membership, 
and again, after 1867, an added impulse was given to an 
unthinking party loyalty through the sudden enfranchise- 
ment of the Negroes, and their admission to the Repub- 
lican party. 

This party loyalty foimd expression in a traditional 



THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 61 

voting, which obscured contemporaneous issues and en- 
rolled men under banners which they could not read. 
The Civil War blazoned certain ideas upon the minds of 
men. The North ^^ waved the bloody shirt''; the South 
rallied to the cry of ^^ negro domination." The party fanned 
these dying fires into flame, and appealed with skill to an 
enthusiasm which in other countries would have attached 
itself to state, king, or army. 

The men who were in politics for money built upon 
this loyalty, which was their asset, as a farm, mine, or fran- 
chise is an asset. They developed their property and 
secured it, as the pioneer and the preemptor developed 
and secured their properties. The professional politi- 
cians soon saw that they must be protected against the 
competition of amateurs, and they formulated the rules 
of the game to exclude interlopers. By force and fraud 
at primary and convention, by party rules strengthen- 
ing strategic and pivotal points, already preempted, by 
securing for themselves immunity from criminal prosecu- 
tion, by developing a special code of honor and esprit 
de corps, they obtained, subject to the right of the people 
to rebel, a strong, firm grasp on party and government. 

When the frontier was reached, and the pioneer found his 
way to the continent barred, he ceased to ignore the state 
and turned to it for protection against the preemptor. 
He now wished to do collectively what he could no longer 
do by his feeble, individual might. But the state, though 
it had grown, had been so checked, cramped, confined, 
that it was hardly a match for the great corporation, 
which had not been cramped but encouraged. Between 
the state and the pioneer, moreover, lay the overgrown, 
unregulated, individualistic political party and its repre- 
sentative, brother to the pioneer and brother to the pre- 
emptor, the individualistic politician, the party boss. 

The attitude of the American had changed towards the 



62 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

politician as it had changed towards the preeiuptor. The 
average man no longer had quite the old ''magnificent" view 
of the poUtician as a weed hardlj'' worth while to tear up, so 
small was its influence on the growing corn. He was no 
longer so tolerant of evils which had grown with the 
country^s growth. The politician was a dishonest servant, 
who should be forthwith dismissed. Hereafter the Ameri- 
can would run his own public business. 

To take away, however, was not so easy as to give. It 
had been part of the political game always to preach to the 
people that the party existed merely as their servant and 
by their leave. But the people had been losing their po- 
litical prerogative through non-user, and the more they 
hugged the delusion of effective self-rule, the more strongly 
did the corrupt party entrench itself. 

Moreover the business of political leadership had be- 
come centralized. Municipal corruption was now a part 
of State corruption; State corruption, a part of national 
corruption. There was always a man ''higher up," often 
very much "higher up." Corruption had become subtle, 
pervasive. An abler type of man had gone into politics, 
restricting the potentialities of the earlier, bruiser type, 
as the preemptor had restricted those of the pioneer. The 
new politician was perhaps a college-bred man, who could 
talk tactfully of the eternal verities. He enjoyed unex- 
ceptionable social connections and good business aflilia- 
tions. Like the preemptor, his ally, he laid under tribute 
the best legal and administrative talent. Politics became 
big business, and it assiduously studied the methods of the 
still bigger business outside. The big business politician 
was far more formidable than had been the little politi- 
cian who had preceded him. 

A still higher obstacle was to be thrust between the 
individualistic, sovereign American and his "servant," 
the political party. As business became synthetic and 



THE SOVEREIGN AMERICAN AND HIS STATE 63 

integrated, as the railroads, coal mines, banks, trust com- 
panies, and insurance companies drew closer together, poli- 
tics, which had grown from a small to a large, independent 
business, became in some parts of America, a mere branch 
in a still larger, integrated business. The state, which 
through the party formally sold favors to the large corpora- 
tions, became one of their departments. The biggest cli- 
ent bought out the concern, as the railroad buys up the 
factory which once sold it supplies. The weak state, 
free to bestow its treasures on its favorites, was controlled 
by the party; the party was controlled by the ring; the 
ring, by the boss ; the boss, by the trust. The petty forms 
of gTaft, the tribute levied on vice, crime, saloons, and 
holders of petty rights and small immunities, persisted. 
But they had become mere by-products. In many States 
the fount of legislation, the wells of justice were controlled. 
Legislation was no longer bought, but owned. The big 
individualist, the giant gambler, had gained his last stra- 
tegic hold. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 

IT is not possible to set an exact date for the end of the 
conquest of the continent. Successive eras in a na- 
tion's history do not fit nicely like the flagstones of a pave- 
ment, but overlap, and the future is born before the past is 
dead. Even to-day, the single-handed grabbing of the 
period of the conquest occasionally appears, naked and 
unashamed. 

However, we may somewhat indefinitely mark off the 
last three decades of the nineteenth century as a transition 
period in America. By 1869 the Union Pacific Railroad 
had narrowed the continent to a week's railroad journey; 
by 1901 the main outlines of our new trust system had be- 
come apparent. Between these two dates the period of 
mere expansion was merging into a new period, of which the 
trust was typical and representative. 

In 1876, when the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition 
opened its doors, America reviewed the achievements of a 
hundred years. The world was invited to compare the pack 
horse with the locomotive, the sailboat with the steam- 
boat, the stragghng, strugghng colonies with the compact, 
secure States. With a pardonable pride America exhib- 
ited as its century's accompHshment the Conquest of the 
Continent and the Evolution of a Nation. 

The nation had been born in the West. The Virginian, 
Pennsylvanian, Rhode Islander, commingling in the Wes- 
tern territory, had lost some of their fealty to their native 
States, and had accustomed themselves to a common loy- 
alty to a larger political unit. The Western States, created 

64 



I 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 65 

out of a national territory by the fiat of Congress, could not, 
like the thirteen original States, claim parenthood of the 
nation. Their artificial boundaries were a confession that 
these States had been made, not born. Their problems 
were national. Their domain was national. Evolved in 
the West by migrants, American and European, the na- 
tional consciousness was a fruit of the conquest of the land.^ 

Immigration had contributed to the same end. An ethnic 
amalgamation of many stocks proceeded at an unprece- 
dentedly rapid rate. Under the free, buoyant spirit of 
America, the Irish peasant, the EngUsh farm laborer, the 
German refugee, became more American than the Americans. 
Peoples estranged for centuries in Europe knew but sHght 
antagonism in the Western land. The native tongue, the 
native customs, the traditional methods of thinking and 
acting, were forgotten by the sons when not abandoned by 
the fathers. Intermarriage, the Anglicization and abrasion 
of foreign names, above all an assimilation in language, 
dress, and methods of making and spending money, reduced 
all the peoples to one almost uniform mass. The gratitude 
of these immigrants attached to Nation, not to State. A 
nationahsm arose, and was tried out during the Civil War. 

The building of a nation was not the only fruit of our 
first hundred years of independence. Wealth, also, we 
had achieved. The continent, wrested from nature, had 
been converted by a century of intense labor into a vast, 
complex, delicate, wealth-creating tool. Our industrial 
organization had attained a high degree of efficiency. The 

* In America nationalism and patriotism attach themselves to soil, 
which is one and indivisible, and not to people, which is diverse. We claim 
no miraculous descent and no Levitical pureness of blood, but rather ro- 
bustly pride ourselves on being more mongrel than other nations. Our 
blood is stirred less by Lexington and Antietam than by the joined shores 
of a wide-stretching continent. So our dithyrambic Fourth of July eu- 
logies of the American nation describe its habitat as "bounded on the north 
by the Aurora Borealis," eto. 



66 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

product of our labor, thanks to the fertility of the continent, 
was greater than anywhere in Europe. Our raiboads were 
more effective Cas they were also more necessary) than those 
of any other country, and our cities, with all their evils, 
were among the most wonderful workshops in the world. 
Our farms, though wastefully and unscientifically conducted, 
produced more in toto than did those of any other land. 
The country Was filhng with new millions of hard-working, 
easy-spending men, gaining steadily in knowledge and the 
ability to produce and intelligently consume. Our labor 
was being crystallized into factories, cities, machines, rail- 
roads, bridges, wharves, and other productive capital, and 
we were making our production ever more efficient by mak- 
ing it more indirect ; by creating tools to produce tools to 
produce goods ; by delaying the consumption of wealth to 
make that consumption greater. American prosperity was 
assured. 

In the conquest of the continent America had become a 
wealthy and powerful nation, with a strong national con- 
sciousness. America had prospered. Nevertheless, when 
the traveler from Europe turned from the records of ma- 
terial progress, displayed at the exhibition, and cast his 
eyes over the back yard of America, he discovered that the 
progress of growth had not been unaccompanied by an ac- 
cumulation of waste products. Out of the American's con- 
test with the wilderness had developed certain barriers to 
future progress : a scarred and wasted continent ; a brick- 
and-mortar substitute for a city ; an unregulated and anar- 
chic industry; a city slum; and an appalhng and shame- 
less political corruption. 

The continent, incalculably fertile and wealth-giving 
though it was, showed signs of a century of rape. Regions 
formerly blessed with a plentiful rainfall had become arid, 
and rivers which once kept their measured beds now al- 
ternated between trickling, unfructifying streams and tor- 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 67 

rential floods. Everywhere were the evil results of the 
destruction of forests, the denudation of soils, the im- 
poverishment of rivers, the annihilation of animal life, and 
the insensate wasting of natural resources by men who 
knew no responsibility, and who in the midst of a self-cre- 
ated desolation were astounded at their own moderation. 
The continent, which had evoked the spirit which meant 
its ravishing, was now Hke a nursery, with its broken toys 
strewn upon the floor. 

Like the continent, the city had been scarred by the same 
waste and preemption, the same insensate optimism, the 
same utter lack of prevision. Cities destined to be the 
home of multitudes had grown up with the abandon of petty 
villages. Streets had been made narrow; parks had been 
forgotten ; houses had been built upon the theory of pack- 
ing boxes ; drainage, water supply, fire protection — every- 
thing had been left to chance and the play of the instinct for 
gain. The theory of the American city was that of the pio- 
neer's camp. People were there for business. Their living 
conditions must work out themselves. 

The citizen of 1876 contentedly voted for crude political 
bosses, as his son to-day votes for bosses of a more refined 
type. The citizen of 1876 contentedly rode in rainy weather 
on the roof of a crowded horse car, as his son to-day rides 
on the outside platform of an overfilled electric car. The 
citizen of 1876 contentedly died of typhoid, because his 
city drank water befouled by other cities. Then, as now, 
municipal heedlessness consigned thousands of citizens to un- 
necessary deaths from tuberculosis. The filthiness of Ameri- 
can towns was a stench in the nostrils, and the houses, 
tenements, and factories, constructed under a regime of 
unregulated individualism, were a menace to health and an 
affront to decency. The American city, destined to become 
the leader in our new democracy, had suffered most griev- 
ously from the spirit of the conquest. So onerous was the 



68 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

burden of brick and mortar that a conflagration, which 
wiped out a whole city, was often an unmixed blessing. 

American business — reckless and implacable — showed 
even more the traces of a barbaric immoderation than did 
forest and city. To only the sHghtest extent did the or- 
ganized national consciousness determine what should be 
produced and sold, or how the human resources of the nation 
should be industrially utilized. Our psychological and 
moral perceptions and our ponderous legal machinery had 
not kept pace with our money-mnged, profit-dreaming busi- 
ness development. The industrially strong had been given 
what they wanted ; the industrially weak might keep what 
they could hold against the subsidized strong. The small 
investor had a legal remedy, but little real protection. 
The consumer had less. The competitor had none. As 
for the worker, male or female, adult or child, skilled or un- 
skilled, he had the right of a freedom of contract, but was 
not always himself economically free. He had the protec- 
tion of the law of supply and demand, but the supply of his 
labor was artificially stimulated. In 1876 — as now — the 
American Commonwealths were far behind the leading 
countries of Europe in laws regulating hours of labor, con- 
ditions of work, the prevention of accidents ; in laws regu- 
lating truck stores, sweat shops, the employment of women, 
the employment of children. 

While some American manufacturers had been protected 
against the competition of foreign manufacturers, our resi- 
dent laborers had not been protected against the competition 
of European laborers. Immigration had brought in nation 
after nation, each with a lower standard of living. Whether 
the ultimate effect was good or bad, whether the immediate 
burden upon the city toiler was tolerable or intolerable, the 
nation had not cared. The labor market might be glutted 
or ansemic, the city tenements and shanties might be crowded, 
the political machine might already be creaking under the 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 69 

weight of illiterate and inarticulate voters. Nevertheless if 
immigrants came — or could be made to come — they must 
be admitted ; if admitted, they must be rudely digested, or 
at least devoured. They must pay their way to an army 
of little ^^ grafters ^^ and to the great respectable tribute-takers 
of city and country. Unrestricted immigration aided an 
ultra-rapid development. It pyramided production. We 
viewed the dense forests of foreigners, as we viewed the preg- 
nant continent, as a boundless, exploitable resource. Into 
our anarchic industry we poured these millions, adults and 
children alike, just as in working the Maine woods we felled 
the saplings, the growing children of the forest, the more 
readily to get at the full-grown trees. There was no gain 
in it except the saving of a Httle time, but a minute to-day 
was more than a forest or a generation to-morrow. 

It had been feared by European observers, even as late as 
the fifties, that the wide dispersion of the early Americans 
would result in a reversion to barbarism. No such regression 
took place. We always carried with us a certain fringe of 
backwoods savagery (which still persists in remote moimtain 
districts), but the main current of American life moved far 
too swiftly to permit of intellectual or moral stagnation. 
Nevertheless a barbarism, different in type from that of the 
backwoods, did parallel the civilizing, pioneering movement. 
With the growth of America grew the slum. 

Our worst slums are not so hopeless as the slough of 
Whitechapel, or the horrid slums of English towns, where 
literally rot the descendants of Cr^cy and Poitiers. The 
poverty of even our most destitute negroes is opulence com- 
pared with the bottomless misery of south Italy or Russia. 
The enormous wealth of the continent, and our long immu- 
nity from serious foreign war or the fear of war, lessened our 
pauperism and held up even our lowest standards of hving 
to a point where they annually attracted, and still attract, 
hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Many of our poorer 



70 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

City wards are not slums at all in the European sense. They 
are not cesspools of society, into which the hopeless human 
refuse inextricably sinks, but are rather trying-out stations, 
out of which are promoted rising immigrants, who have sur- 
vived the corroding experiences of the first years of American 
life. 

Nevertheless, we have slums, pauper slums and criminal 
slums, the heirlooms of our sweaty haste, our headless, soul- 
less egotism, our fragile, apologetic, emasculated state. The 
slum, hke the grim, malevolent ogre of the fairy tale, was 
feasted with children, ground out, destroyed, and corrupted 
in their weakness, and thro\\Ti aside in adolescence, like a 
dry orange. To the slum came eventually the men who were 
maimed in factories, in mines, on railroads, and could not 
recover the cost of crutch or bandage. To the slum came the 
wives and babes of men killed outright in industry, or poi- 
soned systematically, and for profit, by advertised foods 
and medicines. The state, the natural representative of the 
people, fed the slums. It did not interfere when women 
staggered under excessive tasks ; when old men were thrown 
out upon the pavement; when young girls, unable to sup- 
port themselves decently, sold themselves outright to in- 
decency; when strikes broke out and men were starved or 
shot or bayoneted, or in their turn broke the arms of strike- 
breakers, or set fire to their employers' buildings. The 
state had no eyes, senses, dimensions. It was nothing but 
a paralytic old man with a club. 

The serenely stupid indifference of the state, the granting 
of a free hand to all the money-makers — gamblers, specu- 
lators, jerry-builders, franchise grabbers, employers of child 
labor, — to the whole confraternity of '^grafters" — helped 
to muster the ignorant and despoiled denizens of the slum. 
The turbulence of business gave the slum its quota of crip- 
ples, tramps, and paupers; the savage intensification of 
factory labor created thousands of brutalized workers, and 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 71 

tens of thousands of bloodless persons, incapable of further 
labor. Our slums became filled with sick who need never 
have been sick; with derehcts who need never have been 
abandoned. The slum became the abiding place of ^'free 
and equal/' but superfluous, Americans. 

In these crowded, squalid quarters, with high tenements 
towering above dirty, narrow streets, Uved the poor, the 
wretched, the ill, the dissolute, the criminal. Fhmsy parti- 
tions separated families from all corners of the globe. The 
congestion aided in the spread of vice and infectious disease. 
In reeking tenements, in horrible streets and mews and alleys, 
alcoholism, dissipation, consumption, and poverty bred a 
weakly race, while thousands of wretches, food for the jail, 
almshouse, and brothel, were thrown out as unconsidered 
waste products. Upon this festering, weltering mass of 
sodden humanity, the offspring of a careless society, the 
frontier no longer exercised an attraction. There was no 
gateway from the criminal slum. The valves turned in- 
ward, to allow the seeping in of the worsted in the battle. 

A philosophic traveler might well have turned his back 
upon the ^^ exhibits" at Philadelphia to wonder how the 
slum had found its home in the nation ^'conceived in Hb- 
erty," in a nation of free and equal men with free access 
to a continent. And yet the underworld of America was 
but part of the price of our continental adventure. The 
recklessness of the slum dweller, bred of the recklessness of 
the state; the sullen discontent of men whose vision was 
bounded by mean streets and mean sights — this slum- 
stamped, seamy side of American life was but the reverse of 
the daring, optimistic spirit which had conquered the con- 
tinent. The brilliant, imaginative impulse of the conquest, 
that impulse which had felled the trees, ravaged the forests, 
built, as by magic, the instantaneous cities, ground up, or 
evolved, the incoming millions, turned the energies of a na- 
tion and the resources of a continent into an apotheosis of 



72 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the individual — that all-conquering impulse had ended in- 
gloriously in the slum, the nadir of modern life. The indi- 
viduaHst, conquering the primeval wilderness, had erected 
upon the cleared land a city wilderness^ an overgrown, tan- 
gled, rank, and morass-filled forest of distorted and dying 
human plants of all countries, of all natures, ill-assorted, 
struggling for a dwarfed Hfe and — poisonous. 

It had not been entirely unforeseen. From the first the 
conquest of the continent, and the triumphant, ruthless 
materiahsm which it evoked, had aroused an opposition 
from within the nation. A thousand dissidents had risen in 
rebeUion against the crudities, brutahties, and immoraUties 
of the conquest. Amid the shrill clamor of money-making 
individualists had been heard the low minor note of protest. 

Some of this opposition came from quiet stay-at-homes, 
who, loving an orderly existence, could not abide pioneers, 
gamblers, or pushing business adventurers. ^' These men," 
says a great New England divine, speaking of the early nine- 
teenth century pioneers, '^ cannot live in regular society. 
They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodi- 
gal, and too shiftless, to acquire either property or char- 
acter. They are impatient of the restraints of law, reUgion, 
and moraUty; grumble about the taxes, by which rulers, 
ministers, and schoolmasters are supported, and at last, 
under the pressure of poverty, the fear of a jail, and the 
consciousness of public contempt, leave their native places, 
and betake themselves to the wilderness. '^ ^ 

It was not, however, reserved to New England divines to 
protest against the pioneer, nor against the stark material- 
istic and individuahstic spirit of America. Great moral 
and religious movements were in conflict with that dominant 
spirit. Transcendentahsm, ideahsm, perfectionism, the cult 
of a Utopian socialism, swept over the land. Communistic 

» Dwight, Timothy, "Travels in New England and New York."> Lon- 
don, 1823. 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 73 

experiments were tried at Brook Farm, Icaria, and elsewhere. 
The Mormons, united by a newly revealed rehgion, de- 
veloped Utah, without relying upon the individualism of 
other pioneers. Men arose in protest against the ugUness 
and callousness of American exploitation. 

For the most part these protestants were ineffective. 
The man of refined taste, who demanded that material prog- 
ress should be beautiful, had no message for his highly 
inartistic generation. The average American of 1840 did 
not object to the smoke of factory towns, nor to the defacing 
of sylvan glens by advertisements of malaria cures and plug 
tobacco. He had little understanding for purely artistic 
or philanthropic plans, and even the vast moral weight op- 
posed to our theft of Mexico's land could not divert America 
from her task of individuahstically exploiting a continent. 
Waves of religious and ethical emotion rose and fell, but 
they no more decided the course of America than the Sunday 
sermon against greed determines the price at which the 
monopolist sells on a Monday. All these early moral move- 
ments — all but one — failed because they lacked confirma- 
tion by economic necessity. The voices of the reformers 
were drowned in the cannon of 1861.^ 

It was not these reformers, but a quite different group 

* The one exception to the rule that the purely moral movements were 
without much influence was abolition, a moral movement directed against 
the crassest and most archaic form of human exploitation. This excep- 
tion, however, was only apparent. It was because slavery was archaic 
and uneconomical ; it was because abolition was not only a moral, but also 
an economic, movement, in harmony with (and not opposed to) the con- 
quest of the continent, that it was so transcendentally successful. Free 
settlers clamored for free land. The antislavery movement, which in 
1831 found few followers (because there was still an empty continent 
before us), became a potent force in 1860, when the final disposition of our 
available territory was within sight. Upon the Northern side were not 
only the uncompromising Garrisonians and other idealists, but also the 
settlers, the railroads, the corporations, needing more land. The fierce, 
conquering, individualistic spirit, which was overrunning the continent, 
armed the Federal soldiers in their assault upon the Confederacy. 



74 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of men ; it was not the generous aspirations of transcenden- 
talists, but motives of a far tougher fiber, which took us out 
of the old world of planlessness, unregulated grabbing, and 
unrestrained wasting. Not men with a new moral ideal, 
but financiers anxious for profits, put an end to the old 
single-handed individualism. Brook Farm, a community 
built upon ideals, failed ; Gary, a city made to order, a city 
planned for profits, succeeded. 

It could not have been otherwise. When we struck the 
frontier, we were still in the full momentum of a profit-seek- 
ing individuahsm. We were still listening to the cry, ''Go 
West, young men," when, suddenly, to our surprise — there 
was no West. The headlessness, the low social pressure, 
the waste and brutality of the old period could not at once 
give way to sociahzation. What followed was the monop- 
oly age, the age of utilization. Its specific feature was 
the trust ; its typical class the plutocracy. It represented the 
old individuahsm of America, upon which was grafted the 
new ideal of continental reorganization. 

What was necessary was to supplement the mere appro- 
priation of resources by their wiser utilization. It was 
necessary to cultivate intensively, now that mere extensive 
culture had struck against geographical obstacles. Instead 
of waste, economy became the order of the day. There 
was money in by-products — in cottonseed oil, in coal-tar 
derivatives, in the utiUzation of the whole hog. There was 
money in a standardization of plants, of product, of labor. 
There was money, above all, in monopoly. The era of low- 
ering prices gave way to an era of rising prices ; the era of 
industrial anarchy, to an era of industrial subordination. 
Fighting for one's own hand became cooperation for the 
sake of profits. From top to bottom American industry 
was in process of reorganization. 

In this reorganization a new spirit entered business. It 
was an analytical and an objective spirit. Every industrial 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 75 

operation, from the laying of a brick to the building of a sub- 
way, was divided into its constituent parts, subjected to a 
minute and searching financial analysis, and reconstructed 
on a more paying basis. The rule of hand gave way to busi- 
ness methods of scientific precision. The statistician took 
his place in the office, and the accountant, the business 
engineer, and the business statesman introduced a totally 
new efficiency into industry. The chemist in business gave 
a new meaning to the search for by-products, discovering a 
continent greater than that of the pioneer. The inventor 
opened up new sources of wealth, and the forester and the 
agricultiu-al expert showed how conservation meant increased 
production, how you could get more from your land while 
keeping more in it, how a sanely intensive conduct of in- 
dustry could give a greater product with less effort than 
did the former wasteful and sprawUng extensive conduct of 
business. 

While chemists, engineers, inventors, statisticians, agri- 
culturalists, foresters, factory organizers all contributed to 
the reorganization of American business, the greatest con- 
tribution was that of the financiers, of the trust builders. 
These men, the true representatives of the new era, were 
quantitative gentlemen, who held inventors, scientists, and 
factory engineers in the leash of their figures. It was these 
financiers who created the trust, the typical expression of 
the plutocratic reorganization. 

The trust, at its best, represented a more economical and 
more profitable form of business organization than did the 
former competing business. It was made up by the union 
of many thousands of little fortunes, by the cooperation of 
many individualistic manufacturers, who had not wished 
to sell to the trust, and had capitalized their reluctance at a 
high figure. The trust, though in certain respects antisocial, 
did at least prevent some of our earlier reckless wastes. To 
a certain extent it saved needless duplications of plants, the 



76 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 1 

useless sending of cross freights, the absurd vagaries of a 
boundless, competitive advertising, the unnecessary com- 
pUcations of an industry with a hundred heads and a hun- 
dred pairs of flapping and entangling arms. 

At its best, moreover, the trust tended to bring order out 
of chaos; to substitute prevision and a broad outlook for 
the taking of a chance and a narrow view of the situation. 
It was more Ukely, because better able, to save to-day, to 
have to-morrow. It could better preserve monopohzed nat- 
ural resources against the time when depletion would be 
imminent. It could keep down prices to a reasonably 
extortionate level. The trust, safely entrenched, was not 
driven by the fearful, individuaUstic competition in which 
mercy, decency, and even foresight, might place a competitor 
hors de combat. 

Finally, the trust could refrain, if it wished, from many 
foolish, short-sighted and antisocial actions. It could af- 
ford the long view ; it could even afford an ultimately prof- 
itable decency. The trust, especially at its worst, with 
its unfair competition, its tyranny, its over-charges, and its 
poUtical corruption, was by no means the last word in indus- 
trial development, but it was superior to what had preceded 
it, and it was necessary. Because we could not escape from 
our former utter planlessness and anarchy except by reor- 
ganizing our whole business (and allowing acquisitive and 
imaginative men to make billions out of the process), we 
were obhged to go over to a highly centraUzed trust system 
of production. We were obhged to call in a receiver to take 
charge of our assets. We were compelled to raise up despots 
to put an end to the civil strife in our industry. 

It fares ill with a population when it is obUged in its own 
defense to call in mercenaries, military or financial. We 
have paid a high price for the reorganization of our business, 
and everywhere in our industry, in our government, in our 
organs of public opinion, we find the traces of a swaggering 



THE PLUTOCRATIC REORGANIZATION 77 

plutocracy which has claimed its reward as it performed its 
work — and faster. To-day our problems are enormously 
complicated by the presence in our midst of a powerful and 
cohering plutocracy, with vast power and antidemocratic 
temptations. 



CHAPTER VII 

OUB RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 

FOR a long time, disliking the idea of a plutocracy, we 
simply denied its existence. We informed our foreign 
critics that our great fortunes were evanescent, accidental, 
due to temporary disturbances in a permanently equalizing 
economic process. We tried to believe that there were but 
three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves. To- 
day, however, the evidence is overwhelming that American 
fortunes do not vanish, but grow ever larger. Our plutocracy 
can no longer be concealed. 

What is this American plutocracy? It is not, as the 
Century Dictionary defines plutocracy, ^'a class ruhng by 
virtue of its wealth, '^ for it is at most a class in process, and 
its rule is only partial, undefined, and unadmitted. Our 
American plutocracy is rather a more or less fluctuating 
group of very wealthy men, loosely united (primarily by 
pecuniary bonds) who, through their wealth and prestige, 
and through the allegiance of Hke-minded but poorer men, 
exert an enormous, if not preponderating, influence over 
industry, politics, and pubUc opinion. 

This plutocracy does not aspire, and dare not aspire, to 
personal rule. There is a tenacious poHtical myth that our 
miUionaires aim at the subversion of all constitutional guar- 
antees, and at the creation of an American Empire upon the 
ruins of our present republic. But our over-moneyed men 
do not indulge such romantic and belated notions. True, 
an occasional millionaire succumbs to the pitiful ambition 
of *' founding a family," and accordingly ties up his estate 
for a generation or two. True, there are sons and daughters 

78 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 79 

and sons-in-law — young and decorative fashionables — who 
dislike the robustness of American life, and feebly long for 
those signal recognitions of leisured wealth which only 
royalty can confer. These facts, however, are of infini- 
tesimal significance. Our titled marriages and our sudden 
appetite for heraldic quarterings are an unconscious con- 
fession, not a boast. The strident inanities, the ''conspicu- 
ous waste,'' and the advertised idleness of a few transcendent 
spenders are not to be dignified by an imperiaHstic inter- 
pretation. 

After all, our money kings are groundlings. They are, 
for the most part, workmen, or business men evolved, with- 
out the class traditions which protect British peer or Prussian 
Junker from the resentment of the masses. The American 
multi-millionaire reads his evening paper, and (though he 
owns it) forms his opinion, in part at least, by what he reads 
therein. So thin is the wall of wealth, that great business 
magnates, who did but what their predecessors had done, 
have actually died of shame, when an aroused public con- 
tempt had been concentrated upon their financial dealings. 
Individually the great men of America are much Hke the 
Httle men. They are a small group with intense ambitions 
and enormous power, but they still remain intellectually 
subject to the current philosophy of the nation. 

Our loosely cohering plutocracy is of very recent birth. 
'* Until the twenties or thirties of the nineteenth century," 
says Mr. Bryce, ''there were no great fortunes in America 
and few large ones." "Now," he continues, "there is some 
poverty, many large fortunes, and a greater number of gi- 
gantic fortunes than in any country of the world." In 
the twenty years since Mr. Bryce wrote, accumulation has 
been proceeding at an immensely accelerated rate. To-day, 
more than ever before, a plutocratic group has power, pres- 
tige, and pretensions, with a favored economic position and a 
wide notoriety. 



80 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Whence came these sudden millionaires? What seed 
carelessly dropped upon the fertile American continent 
brought forth this strange, exotic fruit ? 

A curiously significant change has come about in our 
attitude towards the origin of millionaires. In the early 
days when our society was less differentiated, and wealth- 
gaining represented exceptional abiUty of approximately 
the same kind as that of the average man, mere possession 
was primxL facie evidence of shrewdness, force, and savoir 
faire. The rich man was the respected ^'leading citizen" 
(with a strong local flavor). He was the ordinary obscure 
citizen raised to the nth degree. The penniless individual, 
on the other hand, was too often a known wastrel, a man of 
evil life or neglected opportunities. With customary Ameri- 
can immoderation we are now swinging from an excessive 
laudation of wealth to an exaggerated blame, and our great 
fortunes are regarded almost as an admission of personal 
dishonesty. The driver of an ice wagon is now coming to 
recognize his own abilities as distinct from and therefore as 
ethically superior to the abihties of the secret financier who 
reorganizes a railroad or floats a trust. ''No man,'' so runs 
a solacing maxim, ''can make a million honestly." 

There is only too much evidence to associate the getting 
of many of our great fortunes with a swaggering financial 
brigandage. The story of our railroad wreckers, of our dis- 
tributors of worthless stocks, of our gentlemanly, manicured 
thieves of public lands, is repeated year by year with nau- 
seous iteration. The incredible rascahties of the old Erie 
Railroad; the historic shifts, lies, violences, and illegalities 
of the Standard Oil Company; the dubious financial ma- 
nipulations of the United States Steel Corporation ; the fraud- 
ulent operations of the Ship-building Trust; the dishonest 
promotion of notorious asphalt companies; the labors of 
the forty thieves of public service franchises — link the present 
with the past in one malodorous chain of financial infamy. 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 81 

It would be invidious to specify more nearly the most 
tainted of our money-makers, to confer a distinction of 
blame where so many are deserving, just as it would be in- 
vidious to compile an incomplete directory of oiu* contem- 
porary pickpockets or '' strong-arm men." Even an outline 
of the corrupt accumulation of fortunes would require more 
volumes than one would care to read or write. For lovers 
of the picaresque, there are hundreds of edifying books, 
reports, and court decisions, and thousands of magazine 
articles, constituting a veritable financial Newsgate Calendar. 
Let us take oiu- feet out of the mire, after noting where the 
mire Hes. 

For the true genesis of our plutocracy, we must go deeper. 
The charge of a universal personal dishonesty is too sweep- 
ing. Fortunes have been made by men of sterhng integrity. 
Others have been acquired by men neither better nor worse 
than their contemporaries. Moreover, the explanation does 
not explain. Even in the thousands of cases where rogues 
obtained milHons of unguarded pubhc treasm-e, we must 
look behind the criminal intent of the fortune-getter to the 
carelessness, ignorance, and political ineptitude of society. 
Our laws, institutions, and philosophies aided, instead of 
preventing, these vast accumulations. We have in this 
country thousands of hopeful and predestined safe-crackers. 
We have also burglar-proof safes, but for which we should 
be despoiled, however loudly we threatened the cracksmen 
with prison and social ostracism. Our gross private accu- 
mulations arose because we had a great social surplus, and 
knew not what to do with it, how to appropriate it, or how 
to guard it. Our unseeing society took the vow of poverty, 
and gave away all it had — to the rich. 

Many avenues have led to American fortunes. Men 
who, by accident or through foresight, held tracts of city 
land, became innocently rich. Others drew fabulous divi- 
dends from unconsidered coal lands, oil fields, iron mines, 



82 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

forests. Some rode to wealth on the wings of a patented 
device — a telephone, typewriter, harvester, glove-hook. 
Men fell heir to the inventions of others — as when the 
owners of rusty horse-car Hnes profited by the discovery of 
electric traction. Other fortunes were found on the dump, 
on the waste heap. Large scale production led not only to 
direct economies, but to the discovery and utilization of by- 
products. Quite apart from its rebates, the Beef Trust, 
through sheer effectiveness in utilizing such waste products, 
would have been able to overcome the Uttle butchers who 
used to fill our cities and towns with their redolent abattoirs. 

Standardization also made fortunes. As the grading of 
wheat enabled a man to deal in miUions of bushels without 
seeing them, so the grading of industrial plants, the stand- 
ardization of labor, and the adoption of uniform systems of 
cost-keeping allowed a single concern to maintain factories 
all over the country. Consumption, too, was standardized. 
By advertising, by sheer repetition of a request to buy, 
manufacturers could directly appeal, over the heads of shop- 
keepers and middlemen, to the consumers of the nation. 
The growing needs of the people were reduced to one com- 
mon denominator. Individual preferences were accom- 
modated and compromised. The cigarette factories and 
biscuit factories compelled the people of Los Angeles and 
Boston, of Jacksonville and Duluth to ask for the identical 
cigarette or biscuit. The babies of a continent were induced 
to cry for a single cathartic.^ 

Although most businesses, from the selling of roach foods 
to the manufacture of battleships and newspapers, have pro- 

^ Standardization also appears in the organization of department stores, 
nation-wide mail-order houses, etc., which are examples, not of specialized, 
but of integrated, businesses. A great department store of to-day is 
merely a federation of independent concerns, for each so-called department 
is an autonomous business, being charged for rent, light, heat, and being 
compelled — in order to keep its place in the store — to contribute its 
share of joint profit. 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 83 

duced considerable fortunes, the chief source of our stupen- 
dous accumulations has usually been some great monopoly 
advantage, not shared by competitors; some advantage 
secured legally or illegally, with the consent of the people or 
in their despite. 

This monopoly, which in its simplest form inheres in 
land and is at the basis of the Astor and the Field fortunes, 
finds its typical modern expression in a great group of rail- 
way, pubhc franchise, and industrial combinations, all of 
which we may conveniently group together under the vague 
and inexact term, "the trust." In this large, loose, and 
somewhat unusual sense of the word, the trust is the busi- 
ness address of our plutocracy, and our plutocrats are the 
trust-builders, ''insiders," the men ''on the ground floor." 
The trust has preyed on the community's surplus, and the 
insider has preyed on the trust. From those who work for 
the trust, seek to compete with the trust, buy from the trust 
or sell to the trust, a steady stream of wealth flows to the 
trust. From the trust and from investors in the trust a 
steady stream of wealth flows to the insider. 

Not all industries are susceptible to the trust process. 
Our farms are relatively small. Our retail trade is only 
slightly in the hands of big organizations. Our many busi- 
nesses of making small special articles, of furnishing per- 
sonal services, are largely under the competitive control of 
small business units. Where, however, a business has a 
natural monopoly element, or where it may be readily 
standardized, or where economy and eflaciency are greater 
in large establishments than in small ones, there, large scale 
production (which, though not inherently monopoHstic, 
lends itself to monopoly) is a necessity of business and a 
permanent symptom of our industrial life. In certain great 
industries we have definitely and irrevocably committed 
ourselves to production on the largest scale. Our railroad 
systems will never again be disintegrated. Our street rail- 



84 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ways will never be broken up into mutually competing parts. 
The Standard Oil Company, under perhaps a new organiza- 
tion and another name, will continue to unify the oil business 
of the country. A steel trust, either the present or some 
future one, will continue to exist. In many important in- 
dustries we cannot possibly return to an unlimited com- 
petition or to production on a smaller scale. Until we under- 
stand this fundamental fact we shall have nothing but hard 
knocks and chaos. 

It is thus possible to speak of the plutocracy not only 
as a group of excessively wealthy men, with their business 
and social retainers, but also as a system of industrial or- 
ganization. We may describe the plutocracy, or the pluto- 
cratic economy, as that system of industry in which a large 
and increasing portion of the income of society flows into 
great reservoirs (usually natural or legal monopoUes) which 
are preempted and controlled by private corporations. 
The plutocratic economy is based upon a narrowing con- 
trol of enlarging funds; upon a unity of command in the 
industrial world; upon the leadership of the large purse. 
Its ideal is the conquest of the world's market. Its creed 
is freedom of large industry from political interference. Its 
weapon is monopoly and large scale production. 

Not only are monopoly and large scale production per- 
manent, but they are rapidly trenching upon small scale 
and formerly competitive industries. The businesses in 
which there is a visible monopoly element are already over- 
powering in magnitude. A totally incomprehensible amount 
of capital, estimated, a few years ago, at thirty-one billions 
of dollars (par, not actual, value), represents the stocks and 
bonds of our railroad, public franchise, and large industrial 
corporations. The United States Steel Corporation alone 
has emitted securities which actually bring on the market 
over one billion of dollars. Despite prohibitory legislation, 
our railroads have continued to unite legally and actually. 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 85 

There are believed to be six compact railroad groups, each 
with a capital of over one bilHon dollars. A single group of 
financiers is supposed to dominate railroads with a combined 
capitalization of three thousand miUions of dollars.^ 

These great amalgamations are still growing.^ The big 
business concern, with a natural or artificial monopoly, or 
merely a short cut to the savings of the people, prospers ex- 
ceedingly. It grows fat by indulging the right to levy an 
increasing toll upon an increasing number of millions. 
Secure from competition (sometimes even from potential 
competition), the trust grows in value with the birth of each 
child and the advent of each immigrant. It raises prices, 
and each increase is immediately reflected in increased earn- 
ings, and in the issue of new capital.^ Not only does the 
public pay the increase (though not without humorous 
grumbling), but it allows the trusts to sell their surplus prod- 
ucts more cheaply abroad than at home, to sell cheap abroad 
for the very purpose of selling dear at home. Though the 
trusts have not been uniquely responsible for the rise of 
prices during the last fifteen years, this rise has taken place 
simultaneously with a cornering of a protected market and 
with the absorption of an increasing proportion of the social 
surplus by industrial combinations. 

The trust succeeds because it is a unit. Consumers, 
laborers, and competitors, on the other hand, are many and 
largely unorganized. The trust can profitably employ a 

1 Not even an approximate exactness is claimed for these figures, which 
are at best but vague estimates. 

2 This does not apply to what may be called pseudo-trusts — mere 
loose, industrial aggregations, with no monopoly advantage, and with an 
aqueous capitalization which reveals the motive of their formation. These 
clumsy business Leviathans merely cumber the ground, and tend to dis- 
appear under the competition of more active, because more economically 
constructed, industrial creatures. 

2 Some ten years ago the railroads, by a mere innocent change in freight 
classification, were able to add tens of millions to their earnings and hun- 
dreds of millions to their capitalizable value. 



86 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

one-hundred-thousand-dollar man to determine when the 
scattered millions of consumers will stand an increase of a 
tenth of a cent per pound or gallon. Over its employees 
the trust enjoys similar advantages. A hundred mill man- 
agers are pitted against each other in a competition to secure 
— not necessarily the lowest paid employees — but the low- 
est possible, the lowest conceivable labor cost. Long hours, 
excessive speed, Sunday labor, night labor, the employment 
of women and children, the casting aside of middle-aged 
men, the cutting down of wages, even the running of truck 
stores enter into this reduction of labor cost. To preserve 
the advantage of unity over multiplicity, to remain one, and 
to keep its opponents many, the great trust usually manifests 
an antagonistic attitude towards labor unions. The hun- 
dred-million-dollar corporation, to rescue its honest workmen 
from the clutches of the walking delegate, prefers to bargain 
individually with each of its employees. Such bargaining 
between the lion and the hare — though recognized by our 
legal traditions as normal — usually redounds to the ad- 
vantage of the lion. 

In its relation to surviving competitors, the trust often, 
though not always, enjoys the same advantage. There are 
in industry many small nooks and crannies in which the 
trust's competitors, because of their very inconspicuousness, 
may survive, while profiting by the high prices maintained 
by the trust. Other corporations thrive by preying upon 
the trusts and especially upon the essentially unstable 
pseudo-trusts. Usually, however, the big industrial under- 
taking can defeat the little one by superior banking, railroad, 
or legislative facilities, or by turning practically unhmited 
resources to a contest in a limited market. The United 
Cigar Stores Company (the Tobacco Trust) destroyed, in 
detail, innumerable tobacconists. The Beef Trust ruined, 
one by one, many individual butchers. The trust fights 
on inside lines. It concentrates all its forces on a single 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 87 

point. The trust has the overwhelming advantage of 
unity. 

The trust magnate has an exactly analogous advantage. 
As the trust is a powerful unit opposed to an unorganized 
and comparatively defenseless industrial society, so, inside 
the trust, the ^^ magnate," the ^^ insider," is a powerful unit 
opposed to unorganized and comparatively defenseless stock- 
holders. The trust rules despotically over business. The 
magnate rules despotically over the trust. 

This despotic rule of the trust magnate is due to a fun- 
damental revolution in the nature of investment. The aver- 
age small investor of to-day — with a capital of twenty, or 
of twenty thousand, dollars — does not take a mortgage on 
his neighbor's farm nor become a silent partner in his neigh- 
bor's business. Those investments exist and attract billions, 
but the greater billions go into large unknown, unoverseeable 
ventures. The little capitalist may not even own the house 
in which he lives, and he may run his business on credit, 
while maintaining a balance at the bank or investments in 
the great industries of the country. Enormous numbers of 
small capitals arc gathered by banks, trust companies, and 
insurance companies, and are invested ultimately in securi- 
ties, which are bought on the stock exchange. Hundreds 
of thousands of men give to brokers large or small funds 
to invest, and thousands of millions of dollars, invested 
in savings banks and in trust and life insurance companies, 
find their way, unknown to their owners, into enormous 
agglomerations of capital. The stocks and bonds of '^ihe 
trusts" are in many cases widely distributed. 

This revolution in investment is a necessity of our modern 
production. It renders capital perfectly mobile. It directs 
the savings of many men with many minds to one great, 
concrete enterprise. It enables a man to '' realize" immedi^ 
ately; to know, day by day, how much he is ''worth.'' 
Under present conditions, however, as a result of no laws, 



88 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

bad laws, and of good laws badly enforced, the little investors 
are not always the controllers or chief beneficiaries of the 
great corporations which they ''own." The very dispro- 
portion between the unit of investment (which is one share, 
worth one hundred dollars or less) and the industrial con- 
cern (which in the steel business is the billion dollar cor- 
poration) tends towards a divorce between ownership and 
control, and by encouraging irresponsibility, and discour- 
aging wisdom and caution in investment, enables the 
insider to profit hugely at the expense of his stockholders. 
Our enormous private fortunes are largely due to this 
control by a few men of the bUnd investments of the 
many. 

It is an old adage that a fool and his money are soon 
parted, and a modern commentary, that a fool is born every 
minute. There is no known way to prevent the men with- 
out brains from contributing to the support of the men with- 
out conscience. We have always had financial manias, 
when men parted with their savings for stock in companies 
'Ho make deal boards out of sawdust," or "for a wheel 
of perpetual motion," while during the South Sea bubble, 
men eagerly bought stock in "sl company for carrying 
on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to 
know what it is." In finance high and low, most men are 
fools some of the time, and some men are fools all of the 
time. 

The defect of our corporation arrangements, however, is 
not that they fail to provide a guardian for each speculative 
fledgling, but that they compel even the cautious, honest, 
and reasonably intelligent investor to work more or less 
with his eyes shut. Owing to business secrecy and uncon- 
trolled financial methods, the safe opportunities are so few 
compared to the enormous masses of capital seeking invest- 
ment, that not only is production made more expensive, 
but the return to capital is so discouragingly low that men 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 89 

are tempted through the hope of a greater gain to invest in 
enterprises of which they know nothing.^ 

While the legal constitutions (the charters of incorpora- 
tion) of our giant trusts are sometimes speciously demo- 
cratic in form, they are often autocratic in practice. 
Theoretically the owner of a single share of stock has a voice 
in the election of directors and the determination of policy. 
Actually the mass of the capital may be invested in bonds 
or in preferred stock not carrying voting power, or the indi- 
vidual shareholder may be deceived, overawed, or dis- 
regarded. The sovereign stockholder is deluded by mis- 
leading circulars, by diversions of profits, by a confusion of 
securities, piled one upon another ; by bond conversions in 
the interest of dominating bankers ; by the arbitrary transfer 
of profits from one constituent company to another. A 
company, with a capital of three thousand dollars, solemnly 
purchases plants worth tens of millions. Dummy directors 
act as purchasers in the real interests of the vendors. Stock 
is issued, and huge debts are contracted, without adequate 
consideration. Stocks rise and fall as dividends are declared 
or passed, and the insiders not only know, but determine, 
dividends. The corporation laws of several States, enlisted 
in an ignoble competition to legitimize robbery, give the 
insider every possible advantage, as does also a business 
secrecy which, because it is permissible in a village grocery 
store, is retained by corporations with hundreds of millions 



1 Moreover, the certificate of ownership — the share of stock — has, 
by becoming standardized, been made immediately vendible. When a 
thing is immediately vendible, its selling price becomes of paramount im- 
portance. The stock becomes worth what some other person wisely or 
foolishly is willing to pay for it, and we cease to care about intrinsic values, 
but buy in expectation of sale. Losses on the stock exchange often repre- 
sent the deluBiona of purchasers as to the extent to which other purchasers 
can be deluded. The man who is seeking Investment runs a gauntlet of 
clashing financial giants and of a mob of epeoulators seeking to out-guess 
one another. 



90 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of the people's savings. More or less, though less than 
formerly, the financial magnate works in the dark. By a 
stroke of the pen he changes the fortmies of thousands. 
To his stockholders and directors he may thimder, '^Vote 
first, discuss afterwards." 

In the lawless days of feudal England the lordless man 
was so unsafe and so despised that he sought out a lord to 
whom he might become a serf. In om* financial world 
to-day we have a somewhat analogous institution of lord- 
ship and vassalage. We have moneyed oligarchs controlling 
the capitals of financial retainers, and we have lordless fit tie 
capitalists seeking a financial lord. There is in all the 
domain of finance no one absolute monarch, since the 
greatest of all must secure the support of neighboring rulers, 
as well as the loyalty of his own money-bound subjects. 
Nevertheless, the great lords of finance do most confidently 
depend upon the unquestioning allegiance of their financial 
vassals, who contribute milHons to blind pools without 
knowing the purposes for which the money is to be used, 
and without subsequently receiving any adequate account- 
ing. The custom of profits — obtained at the expense of 
the industry — seals the mouths and the consciences of 
reorganizers and silent underwriters. They do not ask to 
know. As for the little investor — the theoretic sovereign 
of all this financial realm — he is utterly ignorant and abso- 
lutely impotent. Oligarchy in business is more strongly en- 
trenched than in politics, not only because it is more secret 
and profit-bound, but because the little investor gives his 
proxy or buys his single share with a lighter heart than a 
voter gives his ballot. 

Our plutocracy, based on the trust's position in industry 
and the trust magnate's position within the trust, is com- 
posed, to a great extent, of strong, unscrupulous, far-seeing, 
and ultra-individualistic persons, who secured hold of our 
national monopolized business while we as a nation were 



A\ 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 91 

dreaming of competitive beatitudes. These men, who 
built up our competition-destroying trusts, are themselves 
graduates of a ruthless competition. Our plutocracy made 
its profits under the new rigime, but it formed its habits 
and gained its appetites under the old. 

Under the guidance of these leaders of the plutocracy, 
our industrial concentration continues to grow. Our pro- 
tective tariff aids the trust as against the American con- 
sumer. Our internal free trade aids the trust as against 
less favored competitors in various parts of the country. 
Our almost unrestricted immigration, by creating a surplus 
of labor, aids the trust as against its workmen. Finally, 
our rapidly increasing national wealth aids the trust builder, 
as against the trust investor, by enormously widening the 
sources of capital and by making capital cheaper. 

It is impossible to set limits to the future development 
of our trusts. Just as the control by industrial groups of 
capitals amounting to one bilhon dollars would have been 
almost inconceivable a generation ago, so in the future this 
control may reach even greater proportions. The giant 
trust, which long since ecHpsed city and State, now aspires 
to overshadow the nation. Difficulties of mere organiza- 
tion have been overcome. It is as easy to control a billion- 
dollar, as a one-hundred-milUon-doUar corporation, and it will 
be no more impossible to organize a five-billion-doliar cor- 
poration than it is impossible for the President of the United 
States to adnainister a government of ninety-two million 
citizens. It is quite conceivable that in the future, railroad 
systems or industrial corporations, or enormous federations 
of both, or Titanic holding companies with interests in all 
industries, everywhere, may come to be, in which the capital 
may aggregate three or five or more billions of dollars, the 
working spirits being half a dozen, and the leading and 
responsible executive, one man. 

The diffusion of stock, and the resulting divorce between 



92 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the ownership and the control of these large corporations, 
will make for such a progressive amalgamation. The chan- 
nels through which the billions of savings move toward 
investment tend to approach each other and to coalesce. 
The very nature of big business tends towards a narrow con- 
trol of enlarging funds. The small railroad, swallowed by 
the large one, often prospers by the swallowing, and as its 
stock rises, other railroads shyly clamor to be devoured. 
Gradually it is perceived by grfeat financial powers that 
their interests are not mutually exclusive, but are capable 
of adjustment, and, in spite of friction, an inner momentum 
tends to bring them together. It is largely a problem of 
psychological adjustment, of the gradual removal of giant 
financial leaders with separatist tendencies. When the con- 
ditions are right, when the minds of the rulers of money 
and of the people are attuned to the new conditions, there 
may come, in some period of overwhelming prosperity and 
optimism, a series of combinations compared to which the 
formation of the billion-and-a-half-dollar Steel Corporation 
was a small and timorous venture. 

Stupendous and incomprehensible as such future amal- 
gamations may be, their consummation, immediate or ulti- 
mate, will bring no absolutely new factor into the field, 
but merely an exaggeration of a situation already here. 
What we already have is an industrial oligarchy existing 
in, and almost overshadowing, a more or less democratic 
political community. It is an oligarchy which is the reverse 
and complement of the political society with which it 
coexists. It is based upon the billions of dollars of millions 
of people. It marshals these billions as our political parties 
marshal the voters. 

The industrial oligai'chy is based not only on the dollars 
but on the allegiance (if not the aiffections) of the stock- 
holder. This putative owner of a huge, incomprehensible 
property is still held by the old idea of the perfect liberty 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 93 

of economic action, of secrecy, of competition. He is still 
the "magnificent," optimistic American, who believes that 
he possesses enough liberty of action so long as he has the 
right to buy, hold, or sell stocks (of the value of which he 
knows little). He identifies his interest with that of the 
corporation in which he holds stock, although his true 
interest lies in a public control, which will make for knowl- 
edge, certainty, and equal rights. While he is gradually 
changing, while a progressive disillusionment is bringing him 
slowly to the position of critic, his present attitude is still 
one of belief in the ultimate rights of the trust builders. 
He is still a humble and devout upholder of the plutocracy. 

Thus the plutocracy, based as it is upon a strategic posi- 
tion in our enormous industry, consists not only in the 
votes and the money power of the trust builders, but in 
the adherence of millions of men owning billions of dollars. 
Our resplendent plutocracy, which at the top flowers out in 
enormous fortunes, magnificent benefactions, and absurd 
ostentations, is rooted not only in our pohtical non-regulation 
of economic conditions, but also in the traditions, ideas, and 
ideals of millions of relatively poor men. Without the sup- 
port of the small investors and of many men who have not 
even the wherewithal to purchase a single share of stock, 
the pillars of our resplendent plutocracy would crumble and 
fall. The plutocracy can only maintain itself so long as the 
mass of investors, large and small, are its adherents. 

Still more fundamentally the plutocracy maintains itself 
because as a nation we still do not know what to do ; because 
we support the plutocracy by attacking not causes but 
symptoms. We object to the false scales of the Sugar 
Trust, as we object to all the devices, honest, dishonest, and 
semi-honest, by which a few men maintain a business 
despotism. We object rhetorically to an oligarchic control 
of industry, especially when such control leads to spohation 
and to an immoralization of business. But as a nation we 



94 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

still believe in the universal efficacy of competition, and we 
still expect that as soon as we have killed the trusts, our 
one time independent, but now merged, manufacturers will 
awaken from sleep and begin competing again where they 
left off twenty years ago. 

In the past we have tried to end our plutocracy by merely 
''smashing" the trusts, not reahzing that with all their 
imperfections and immoralities they represent a stage in our 
development from the anarchic industry of half a century 
ago to the completely socialized industry of half a century'' 
hence. We have turned towards the trust a countenance 
less in sorrow than in anger, and we have tested the vital- 
ity of industrial combinations by whacking them over the 
head, as the miUtary engineer gauged the strength of bridges 
by prolonged cannonading. Our Sherman law — a law 
with more fist than head in it — and our crude antitrust 
legislation generally, are attacks not upon the economic 
foundations of the plutocracy, but upon the integrity — the 
wholeness — of business. We cannot kill the trusts with- 
out taking away our own bread and butter. 

We are at last beginning to reahze that while the ''criminal 
record" of many of our trusts is a fact important his- 
torically and ethically, nevertheless the recognition of this 
fact does not teach us how in the future we must run our 
national businesses. We are beginning to see that we can 
moralize, we can socialize the trusts, and can build more 
wisely upon the economic tendencies of the age. This we 
are slowly, painfully learning. The trusts are teaching us 
— as we are teaching them — that the end of it all must 
be production on the largest scale compatible with efficiency, 
but a production so regulated as to ownership, stock issues, 
dividends, prices, wages, and profits as to safeguard the 
whole community. Unless we are to take the saltum mortale 
of a complete and immediate governmental ownership and 
operation of all large industries, we must work out a more 



OUR RESPLENDENT PLUTOCRACY 95 

perfect system of corporation control in the interests of 
society. 

Against such measures of regulation, against even the 
creation of a state and of democratic machinery capable of 
such regulation, the plutocracy opposes the dead weight of 
its resistance. Our business magnates, to get what they 
could and hold what they got, have long since occupied the 
pohtical positions which the democracy must gain before 
such regulation is entirely effective. The leaders of the 
plutocracy are giving direction to their pecuniary aspira- 
tions by carrying over their activities from the economic 
into the political field The key to the citadel which the 
plutocracy has established in industry lies in the law ; the 
law depends upon legislatures and courts ; the legislatures 
and courts upon parties; the parties upon the powers, 
open and occult, which control them. To prevent the 
democracy, through its control of politics, from conquering 
the industrial field, the plutocracy enters politics. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 

CORRUPTION is the natural weapon of a wealthy 
minority, as deception is of the weak, and force of 
the strong. Our plutocracy in its invasion of the political 
field corrupts legislators, administrators, judges, and parties. 

In any rapid view of our present-day political corruption, 
it is difficult to avoid exaggeration both as to its volume and 
significance. We find the trail of evil influence in so many 
places that we are prone to generaUze political depravity, 
and to ignore the large fields of pubHc Hfe in which venality 
is absent or quite subordinate. '^ Graff is more spectacu- 
lar than the gray honesty of ordinary Hfe, and it is far easier 
to point out evil than to determine its exact boundaries. 

Before stating the influence of the plutocracy upon poli- 
tics, therefore, it may be wise to emphasize certain consider- 
ations which Hmit the universahty of our conclusions. In 
the first place it is not to be supposed that all, or a majority, 
of our financial magnates have exerted an improper influence 
on legislation, or have sought to do so ; nor is it contended 
that the level of poHtical probity of this group (in proportion 
to its opportunities and temptations) is sensibly inferior to 
the general level of our whole population. Secondly, it is 
not assumed that the development to be described has taken 
place in all cities and States, or that it has been unimpeded ; 
for, as will later be shown, countervailing forces have devel- 
oped so rapidly that the corporate influence upon politics 
seems far weaker to-day than it was five or ten years ago. 
Finally, however amiable the intentions of our more unscru- 
pulous industrial leaders, they cannot lay claim to the dis- 
tinction of having invented corruption. 

96 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 97 

Corruption, in fact, is no new thing in America. Charges 
of venality were preferred against the founders of the 
Repubhc, and from 1828 to 1860, during the ascendancy of 
the Democratic party, public officials openly boasted of 
their ' ' stealings. ' ' The history of the Civil War was streaked 
with graft. The administrations of Grant, both in the re- 
conquered States and at Washington, were an orgy of 
venality. The State governments, among which New Jer- 
sey maintained a bad eminence, were often degraded, 
while many cities were corrupt beyond conception. Munici- 
pal venahty was downright, abject, open, chronic. Vicious 
elements in the population were mobilized under the banner 
of graft. Almshouse inmates marched en masse to the polls, 
and were voted wholesale. Elections were carried by col- 
onization, intimidation, ballot-stuffing, and false counting 
of votes. A succession of bandits, of whom Tweed was 
not the first, protected and blackmailed vice, crime, and 
franchise-seeking corporations. Indirect filchings coexisted 
with the custom-honored method of openly steaHng money 
from the public treasury. 

The peculiar significance of our present-day American 
political corruption lies not in its novelty, but in its change 
of character and source. It has become subtle, scientific, 
organized. It has become a pendant to large business, 
which is also subtle, scientific, organized. To-day political 
corruption is menacing, not only because all corruption is 
immoral and antidemocratic, but because it represents the 
intrusion into politics of a disciphned and aggressive plu- 
tocracy. 

Wealth invades politics to gain new wealth and to safe- 
guard that already won. It seeks to prevent ^interfer- 
ence" and repel ^'sociahstic and demagogic" attacks on 
property. It is willing to fight for peace; to bribe for 
'^ justice." It seeks the things to which it feels it has a 
right. Oiu" political corrupters are animated by a specious, 



98 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

self-justif3dng philosophy of business, and their actions are 
condoned by thousands of beneficiaries, who, though good 
and patriotic (as goodness and patriotism go), desire above 
all to conserve material and moral interests, believed to be 
endangered by the "uncontrolled" representatives of the 
people. 

Corruption is not unilateral. It does not descend from 
business into poUtics without reascending. Corporations 
bribe legislators. But legislators also bludgeon and black- 
mail corporations. Our legislators were not all uncorrupted 
creatures of God before the Fall, nor was every indus- 
trial magnate an insinuating serpent, crawling into the 
pohtical garden. The share of obloquy may fairly be 
contested. 

Our lawgivers had a "feehng of their business" long 
before trusts were conceived. They knew their value to 
citizens who profited by a '4ax" enforcement of laws, and 
they delighted to levy tribute on prostitute, gambler, and 
pickpocket. Laws were passed for the purpose of selling 
exemptions and granting indulgences. Crooks in and out 
of ofiice joined dirty hands. Outside partners of ruling 
officials secured the adoption of faulty building plans. 
Lawyer friends of judges won doubtful cases. Bondsmen, 
runners, lodging-house sharks, and the whole underworld of 
btisiness and corrupt pohtics learned to "divide" and 
conquer. There was no limit to the evil sphere of influence 
of the lesser poHticians ; no end to the "rake-offs" and 
"shake-downs" ; no graft too petty or disgusting to escape 
the humble ambitions of small political fry. These men 
were venal before the advent of the latter-day large-scale 
•Ibriber. They escaped corruption because already infinitely 
corrupted. When, however, in the fullness of time and fate, 
the wholesale briber, the business lobbyist, appeared ifpon 
the scene, the venal politicians gravitated towards him 
with the spontaneity of beings fulfilUng natural and pre- 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 99 

destined instincts. They were like parasites which benefit 
the "host" they prey on. 

Petty graft has now declined into a mere adjunct to 
organized big business graft, which gives tone to a multi- 
farious corruption, and welds it into one noxious, formidable 
system. The blackmail of vice and crime — petty in detail, 
though enormous in its threatening aggregate — is like the 
humble forest floor, the matting of lichens, mosses, and 
ferns, protected by and protecting the upright trees and 
their flowering branches. The president of a councils- 
buying traction company is in real, though unsuspected, 
league with the woman on the street who passes a stealthy 
dollar to the patrolman. The august board of directors 
of the legislature-owning railroad are own brothers to the 
second-story man, who to pursue his lesser calling must 
also seek legislative connivance. The bond between these 
groups is the nexus of political interest. The great men 
who escape taxation through representation in the tax 
office, who defeat needed legislation because it interferes 
with their profits, have no sympathy with the tolerated 
street thugs or the little men who finance vice. And yet, 
Hke citizens of a feather, they vote and bribe and steal 
together. The big corrupters could not hold their own 
but for the votes and the fists of the little scamps. The 
little scamps could not survive but for the money, intel- 
ligence, and protecting respectability of the princely cor- 
rupters. 

The organizing skill of the business magnate in systema- 
tizing political corruption has changed it from a local 
though chronic phenomenon to one which is organic and 
nation-wide. ''Every time I attempted to trace to its 
sources the political corruption of a city ring," says Lincoln 
Steffens, the acute political pathologist,^ 'Hhe stream of 

^ Steffens, Lincoln, "The Struggle for Self-Qovernment.'' New York, 
1906, page 3. 



100 THE NEW DEMOCRACY ^ 

pollution branched off in the most unexpected directions 
and spread out in a network of veins and arteries so com- 
plex that hardly any part of the body politic seemed clear 
of it. It flowed out of the majority party into the minority ; 
out of politics into vice and crime; out of business into 
politics, and back into business; from the boss, down 
through the poUce to the prostitute, and up through the 
practice of law into the courts ; and big throbbing arteries 
ran out through the country over the State to the nation 

— and back. . . . Not the political ring, but big business 

— that is the crux of the situation." 
The industrial oligarch, on entering politics, raised cor- 
ruption to a higher power. He was above party (as were 
the corrupt party leaders), and he abetted both contestants 
for office, or the one more likely to win in the particular 
city or State. He cared little for platforms or other ora- 
torical effects, but limited himself to the constitution of 
the party machine, the elevation of the boss, the choice of 
utilizable, though inconspicuous, officials, and the judicious 
manning of important legislative committees with men 
pliable, purchasable, or purchased, or whose antecedents 
were known and approved. In conjunction with party 
bosses, the business corrupter created an intricate scheme 
of progressive promotion, an elimination of the stiff-necked, 
and the proper rewarding of all men according to their 
utility. 

In many cities, this corrupting leadership fell into the 
hands of speculators in street railway, gas, electric light, 
water, and other franchises. The city was openly and 
contemptuously despoiled. In New York, Chicago, Phila- 
delphia; in Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburg; in a tediously 
long list of American cities, grants in perpetuity of stupen- 
dous value were obtained for the bribing. Unscrupulous 
finance went hand in hand with a light-hearted betrayal of 
popular rights. The man who stole a franchise and sold it 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 101 

again to the people while still keeping it — a commonplace 
of financial legerdemain — took, while he was about it, 
the city government. He dominated conventions, made 
and unmade mayors, and, where necessary, selected and 
elected his own governor. 

It is held by some that the city is originally sinful while 
the State is endowed with a larger portion of political 
grace, and that, therefore, the erring municipality should 
be subjected to minute State-made laws. We now see, 
however, that this maternal hgament between State and 
city is a channel as much for the spread of corruption as for 
the contagion of political innocence. City corruption is 
but part of a ramified State corruption, and when city 
grafters are in danger. State grafters rush to their assistance. 
When, as Mr. Steffens points out, Minneapolis sought re- 
form, Minnesota interfered ; the reformers of Pittsburg were 
checkmated by corruptionists at Harrisburg, and the people 
of Cleveland, after defeating the city traction interests, 
were obliged to take up the battle anew with adverse forces 
at Columbus and — Washington. 

While the franchise corporation, and sometimes the rail- 
road, secured control of the city, the State government in 
many cases came under the dominion of the railroad and 
the industrial corporation. The corporation appointed its 
own men to office, escaped its fair share of taxation, defeated 
legislation, and secured franchises and privileges. The 
autocratic control of politics spread from State to nation, 
so that the United States Senate, as well as the House of 
Representatives, became in part bulwarks and defenders of 
unfair privilege. 

One of the simplest methods of obtaining power over 
legislation was by direct bribery of the lawmaker. This 
was especially easy and efficacious where the object was 
simply to defeat legislation, for in oiu' multiform govern^ 
ment, with its split responsibility favoring the status quo, 



102 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

a bill, in running the gauntlet, may be dispatched without 
its real assassin being discovered. The bill may be killed 
in a committee of the Lower House, or not reported out. 
It may be emasculated by amendment, or so ^' strengthened '' 
as to insure either its legislative defeat, or its ultimate 
rejection by the courts. It may be voted down on the 
floor of the House. It may be talked to death. It may 
meet any of these fates in the Upper House. It may be 
vetoed by the Executive. It nmy fall without a positive 
veto by the adjournment of the legislative body. It may 
be annulled by the courts for any of a hundred reasons, 
intrinsic or technical. Finally it may be placed on the 
statute book and be affirmed by the courts, and yet remain 
unenforced or malenforced. Who killed Cock Robin is 
often an unsolvable problem. Upon the vote of one man, 
given in the obscurity of a committee room, may depend 
the fate of a measure desired by a majority of the people, 
but unwelcome to a corrupting corporation. 

The bought legislator may betray his trust without 
arousing suspicion. It is easy to destroy by delay; to kill 
by seeming kindness ; to smother a bill in very excess of 
love. The need of information is urged by men who want 
not knowledge but postponement. Incidental and hypo- 
thetical hardships of a measure are paraded before willingly 
credulous legislators, and multimillionaires hide behind the 
skirts of widows, and mingle their tears with those of desti- 
tute orphans. A poor woman, threatened with a law 
reducing her labor to ten hours a day, pawns her furniture 
to make a long trip to the State capitol, there to add her 
protest to that of some benevolent manufacturers' associa- 
tion. Corrupt legislators are reasonable beings and can find 
a reason for what they are paid to do. 

In legislative crises the pressure upon wavering men is 
increased until resistance breaks down as under a thumb- 
screw. Money, cajolery, flattery, and intimidation furnish 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 103 

the arsenal of the bribers, — those adept miners and sappers 
of human steadfastness. The bribers beHeve that every 
man has his price, and whether it be '^egal fees," stock= 
exchange tips, social recognition, political preferment, flat- 
tering newspaper paragraphs, or the subtler flattery of a 
private interview with the Olympian employer of the briber, 
the price is paid. Even more devious means of ^ ' persuasion " 
are employed. From nowhere, from the depths of an 
ominous anonymity, arise vague rumors concerning the 
political or personal morality of the recalcitrantly honest. 
Traps are laid, and the tempted legislator, because of his 
very straightforwardness, finds his actions clouded over by 
a veil of false appearances. Gradually he loses a certain 
fine Puritan fervor of reform. He feels that he fights alone, 
unaided by public knowledge or sympathy, or the assurance 
of an ultimate popular justification. At last, by contagion 
of example, he comes to believe that in this political laby- 
rinth the direct road, hewn out by sheer strength, leads to 
nowhere, while the sinuous, seductive deviations, the well- 
grooved convolutions, are the only possible course. Beset 
by ugly penalizing rumors on the one hand, and the seduction 
of money and political preferment on the other, he succumbs. 
He sins in his own defense ; he ^^ loses his virtue to save his 
reputation." Thereafter he becomes more circumspect — 
for his purchaser cares little how he talks, so long as he 
votes straight. 

No such system of specialized, standardized, subtilized 
corruption could exist without capital to finance it. This 
capital is thriftily furnished by unscrupulous magnates, who, 
though they bribe, consider bribing beneath them, and have 
sovereign contempt for their own wretched brood of political 
procurers, who furnish what is demanded — and no ques- 
tions asked or embarrassing explanations given. The in- 
vestigation of the life insurance companies showed that the 
money of the insured — of those very widows and orphans, 



104 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the patron saints of corrupting millionaires — was turned 
into a "yellow-dog fund" for the purchase of legislators. 
Predatory corporations assign to " advertising and publicity 
accounts" expenditures which need not be advertised and 
could not be pubUshed. Franchises are stolen by free 
lance bribers, who sell their ''interests" to ''innocent third 
parties," who in turn invite the public through stock sub- 
scriptions to repiu^chase their own. It is a Thieves' Market, 
in which the beneficiaries stand in no ascertainable legal 
relation to the thieves, and in which the public has no 
redress except the melancholy satisfaction of locking the 
stable door. 

While the predatory corporation often stoops to pur- 
chase a single legislator, to pick up a human trifle at a 
sacrifice, the main channel through which this corruption 
flows is the party. Through obedience to party many 
wavering legislators are secured. The corrupter buys whole- 
sale, and the party machine becomes his agent and sponsor. 
In our present American political system, we have corrup- 
tion of, by, and through the party. 

The rank and file of political parties is not corrupt, for this 
rank and file is practically the adult male population of 
the country. Nor is a majority, or even a large minority, 
of party agents venal. The virus of corruption runs through 
the party simply because in America it is the channel of 
representative government. Like the advocates of social 
regeneration, so the debauchers of men repair to the party 
to set the seal of their ambitions upon this instrument of 
popular sovereignty. 

The party is corruptible because largely irresponsible. 
In our complicated government, where responsibility has 
always been as diffused as the light of Arctic spring, it was 
difficult to bring all powers of government under the do- 
minion of one party, and it was often impossible to know 
whom to punish for known and felt abuses. The party 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 105 

which strove for reform in our national government might 
stand for bottomless corruption in city or State. Not be- 
lieving that it possessed the power of carrying out its prom- 
ises, the party made promises all the more rashly. States- 
men unable to control corrupt associates abandoned the 
effort, surrendering their places to self-seeking men, who 
aided in the conversion of the party into a piratical busi- 
ness enterprise. 

The root of this party deterioration was money. The 
party became a beggar, a sturdy rogue without visible 
means of support, yet Hving riotously, and insisting that 
the world owed him a good living. Instead of taking the 
vow of poverty, as a popular party should, instead of being 
supported openly and democratically (as is to-day the 
Socialist party) by the pennies and nickels of its members, 
the partj^ demanded, and received, an endowment from 
men willing to invest in political organization as they 
invested in railroads and timber lands. 

For however independent the party became of the people 
at all times except election day, it never became independ- 
ent of money. Money it must have — and much money. 
Mere cohesion was expensive. At election time there were 
parades, torchlight processions, open air meetings, crowded 
halls, the securing of speakers, the obtaining of straw votes, 
advertisements in hostile newspapers, the sending out of 
thousands of tons of campaign literature, chowder picnics, 
the payment of loyal but hungry workers, to say nothing 
of the 'illegitimate" expense of '' blocks of five" in doubtful 
districts. Politics was business ; business required capital ; 
and to the capitaUst belonged the revenue of the enterprise. 
Corporations did not contribute to campaign funds without 
hope of influencing legislation, administration, and justice. 
The secret campaign contribution, the logical outcome of 
our political philosophy, was Esau's mess of pottage. 

This corruption of legislators and parties, this attainment 



106 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of strategic positions in the political field, was not due, in 
the beginning at least, to a thought-out, class-conscious 
campaign of a cohesive plutocratic group. It was not one 
correlated system of interdependent parts. Each man 
merely acquired the political facihties which he needed in 
his business, without much thought of the simultaneous 
actions of like-minded men in other places. 

These individual spheres of pohtical influence are now 
beginning to coalesce, just as big businesses themselves 
are coalescing. There is in process a pohtical integration, 
similar to our industrial integration, and due to precisely 
the same causes. Corporations, financially interlinked, are 
brought together automatically on the political field. Men 
who for years have grumbled about telephone charges find 
themselves opposing the State regulation of such rates, 
because an '^attack'' upon one ''interest" is a peril to all. 
There is a pohtical, as well as an industrial, ''community 
of interest." ^ 

The progress of this pohtical integration, though gradual, 
is rapid. Pohtical "holdings," hke financial "holdings," 
are "merged," first for a single pohtical "operation," and 
later for a whole pohtical pohcy. The hke-mindedness of 
financial magnates, hke the hke-mindedness of pohtical 
mercenaries, gives rise to a secret, interstate, bi-partisan 
pohtical machine. Democratic Congressmen, vassals of 
financiers above party, support a Repubhcan ohgarchy ; 
Repubhcian repeaters in one State are loaned to a Demo- 

* Not only does the plutocracy possess this political solidarity, which 
money bestows, but also the power of scenting danger a long way off. 
Our whole industrial system is based upon an intelligent estimate of future 
happenings, and the present value of a railroad corporation declines if 
there is real reason to fear that five or twenty or perhaps even fifty years 
hence the property will in whole or in part be confiscated, or its profits 
reduced. When the sensitive Wall Street barometer registers a danger, 
immediate or ultimate, to one listed security, other securities plunge down- 
ward in sympathy. 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 107 

cratic boss in a neighboring State. Political gladiators for- 
get to fight. A sweet vision of gilded peace, of a veritable 
Pax Romana, stirs hearts long inured to bitter partisan strife. 
The two parties, united at last in a competitive devotion to 
a generous plutocracy, sleep on their arms in an affectionate 
embrace. A political trust comes into being. 

This political trust is more ramified, systematized, and 
powerful than any in the history of American pohtical insti- 
tutions. It represents trust methods applied to poHtics. 
It is a secret, effective, card-index scheme of government, 
based on the elimination of surplus political machinery, the 
standardization of corruption, and the organization of all 
legislative bodies on the approved model of the dummy 
board of directors. The system, crossing party lines and 
State Hues, is built like a pyramid from the ubiquitous ward 
heeler up through the ward boss, the city boss, the State 
boss, to a shadowy — as yet non-existent — national boss, 
seated perhaps in the Speaker's chair or in the Senate of 
the United States. 

The mortar of this edifice is money. It is money which 
negotiates the direct purchase, for immediate or " future 
dehvery," of individual legislators and of whole party 
machines. But the power of the political trust has even 
a wider base. Though money has been used and is still 
used in national State, and local politics, though men occa- 
sionally buy their way, almost openly, into the Senate of the 
United States, though the dollar mark is placed above many 
portals to pohtical life, still it is safe to say that pohtical cor- 
ruption is only the immediate, and not the ultimate and 
determining factor in the invasion of politics by the plu- 
tocracy. If the contest were simply one between men and 
money, between millions of clear-eyed voters on the one 
hand and silent bribers on the other, the issue would soon 
be determined. Despite race and sex limitations, we have 
a practically democratic suffrage, and if we were once fairly 



108 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

united in opposition to any institution, however protected 
by money, we could vote it off the face of the continent. 

What retards such united action is an ideal, a tradition, 
an affection for poUtical institutions and modes of thought 
which have become endeared to us through a century of 
national Hfe. It is not because we love it that we press the 
plutocracy to our bosom — on the contrary, we hate it 
devotedly — but because we love the things which give to it 
life and extension. Our hand is stayed by ancient poHtical 
ideas which still cumber our modern brains; by poUtical 
heirlooms of revered — but dead — ancestors. Between us 
and it, the plutocracy thrusts the Constitution of the United 
States. Defeated in the legislature it seeks sanctuary in 
the courts. 

There are many things in the business and poHtical world 
of 1911 which were undreamed of by the men who drafted the 
federal Constitution. Nothing in the minds of Hamilton and 
Madison could remotely have paralleled the interpretations 
which high-priced trust attorneys have placed upon this 
instrument. Yet the Constitution was especially designed 
for a class which bore a similar relation to the America of 
1787 that the plutocracy bears to the America of 1911. In 
any event, it was possible for the plutocracy to capture the 
Constitution, just as it was possible, several generations ago, 
for a like capture to be effected by the slave power. 

The Constitution aids the plutocracy in many ways. It 
is Hke an old, rambUng mansion, which cannot be Ughted, 
and in the dark places of which our enemies secrete them- 
selves. The plutocracy benefits by the sharp hmitations 
which the Constitution places upon national and State 
efforts for reform. Most undemocratic feature of all, the 
Constitution fiu-nishes no adequate opportunity for popular 
amendment. 

Thus the Constitution — to which we have owed and still 
owe much — is a stiff, unyielding, and formidable — be- 



1 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 109 

cause venerable — obstacle to a true democracy, and a strong 
bulwark of the plutocracy. It stands firm largely because 
of an unlimited admiration, which forbids adverse criticism, 
and almost precludes discussion. According to current 
theory, the Constitution of 1787 is good enough for the people 
of 1911 or 2011 or 3011, its principles and solutions being 
eternal. It consequently happens that the ancient squabbles 
of jealous, petty commonwealths still afflict a great nation, 
infinitely more civiHzed than the community which gave 
birth to this organic law. 

Actually our Constitution is amended to-day (as it has 
been amended for the last one hundred and twenty years) 
chiefly by process of interpretation. New senses are given 
to old words ; the growing political foot, by sheer pressure, 
changes the old stiff shoe. This amendment by interpreta- 
tion, however, is carried out not by direct representatives 
of the people, but by the Supreme Court, a body of nine 
honorable, estimable, and politically irresponsible jurists. 

This irresponsibility was intended by the Constitution, 
and has been approved by a century of acquiescence on the 
part of the people. Yet the latitude of this irresponsibility 
might well give us pause. Not only does the Supreme Court 
decide questions of far greater moment than that of war or 
peace, not only does it hold a constitutional veto upon the 
most fundamental exercise of national sovereignty, but this 
right is exercised by men who have never received the suf- 
frages of their fellow-citizens, and who, once seated upon the 
bench, are practically forevermore irremovable. The Chief 
Justice of the United States is responsible to his God and 
his conscience (as is the Czar of Russia), but he is not re- 
sponsible to the ninety million people. Politically, he is 
more irresponsible than a city alderman, for the alderman 
needs oiu* votes, and the Chief Justice does not. If eighty 
million people want a law and five of the nine judges decide 
that the measure is not constitutional, then, legally, the 



110 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

eighty million will not prevail against the five. There is no 
appeal from the five jurists to the eighty millions — for the 
people are not presumed to know, until told, what is con- 
stitutional and what is not. They cannot, except through 
the impracticable process of impeachment, remove the judges 
or appoint other ones. They must wait until the judges 
die and new judges take their place. In the meantime, the 
people who need the law also die. 

It must be admitted that, in the ordinary course, our 
highest federal judges have shown wisdom and patriotism, 
have sought to interfere little with national executive and 
legislature, and have been free from even the vaguest sus- 
picion of venality. But whether it be exercised wisely or 
unwisely, virtuously or viciously, this right of the Supreme 
Court, finally and unreviewably to declare a law void, in 
opposition to the opinion of a majority, constitutes, in the 
absence of ample facilities for a popular amendment of the 
Constitution, a flat and uncompromising negation of de- 
mocracy. Though the veto of the court is presumed to be 
based upon the sole ground of constitutionaUty, neverthe- 
less the probable tendency and economic effects of the law 
actually enter into the determination of constitutionaUty, 
of which the nine jurists are final arbiters. 

Even though the decisions of the Supreme Court were 
invariably democratic, and made for an extension of pop- 
ular power, still so long as these decisions were not re- 
viewable by the people through the power of easily amend- 
ing the Constitution, it would be an undemocratic way 
to achieve democracy, and we might well look this gift- 
horse in the mouth. But the general trend of the court 
decisions, at least until recently, has not been unduly favor- 
able to a rapid extension of democracy, to the effectuation 
of popular control over industrial and social relations. While 
the Supreme Court of the United States, like other bodies, 
has come more or less under the ripening influence of a new 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 111 

democratic spirit ; while it has shown greater hesitancy than 
have many State com-ts in nuUifying needed State laws, it 
has not so democratized om* Constitution as to render possible 
the carrying out of necessary measures of poUtical and social 
reform which other nations have adopted. According to 
Prof. Frank J. Goodnow/ there are some measures " which 
many beheve to be absolutely necessary either now or in the 
future . . . which we in the United States are probably pre- 
cluded from adopting because of the attitude now taken by 
the courts towards our practically unamendable federal con- 
stitution.'' Among these measures ^' may possibly be men- 
tioned some which are apparently regarded as essential parts 
of a program of effective social reform ; such as pensions or 
pubhc insurance in case of old age, accident or sickness 
where the recipient of the pension or insurance is not actually 
a pauper and where the fund from which such pension or in- 
surance is obtained is derived from taxation ; the regulation of 
the hours of adult male labor in any but the evidently most 
harmful trades ; effective regulation of the use of urban land; 
and the use of the powers of taxation and eminent domain 
for the purpose of furthering schemes to provide aid for the 
needy classes. Furthermore, it is somewhat doubtful whether 
without amendment of the federal constitution our poHtical 
organization can develop in such a way as to be in accord 
with even existing economic conditions, not to speak at all 
of the future." Whatever may be the attitude of certain 
groups in the community towards such measures, continues 
Professor Goodnow, " it is beUeved that there are few persons 
having the welfare of this country really at heart, or not 
blinded by prejudice or class interest, who will assert that 
the conditions of the American people are so peculiar that 
we should close for them the avenues open to other peoples 
through which orderly and progressive political development 

* "Social Reform and the Constitution," New York (Maomillau) , 1911, 
p. 332. 



112 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

in accordance with changing economic and social conditions 
may proceed." 

It is not to be assumed that the attitude of our highest 
court, where it has favored the pretensions of the plutocracy 
or obstructed the expansion of the democracy, has been 
the result of a conscious, let alone an interested attempt 
to influence the balance of power in America. It is 
possible that occasionally there has been a subtle bond 
of sympathy between the politically irresponsible judges, 
raised to the very pinnacle of om* social structure, and 
the more statesman-Uke and cultured of our irresponsible 
business princes. The road to the federal court runs through 
the practice of corporation law with the business magnates 
as clients, and points of view and social interpretations 
imbibed in one's youth are hkely to survive middle age. 
But the real cause of the excessive conservatism of our con- 
stitution, as it is interpreted by the courts, seems to be 
the comparative inflexibility of the judicial mind, a certain 
blindness to the changing social and economic order, an 
exaggerated veneration for ancient principles of law, estab- 
lished under conditions which no longer apply. The very 
excellence of the federal judge's qualities carries with it cer- 
tain limitations, a stubborn respect for the prestige of prece- 
dent, and an impatience of the cruder strivings of a raw 
democratic spirit. When we reflect that our higher federal 
judges have for the most part been old men, with the inelas- 
ticity of old men ; when we examine into the sources of their 
nomination; when we trace their activities during the 
twenty years immediately preceding their elevation, we 
need not wonder that instinctively, and with perfect mental 
honesty, they have gently inclined as a rule towards the side 
of privilege, towards a strict interpretation of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States favorable to the plutocracy. 

All of this is remediable through the education of the judges 
and of ourselves, and through the creation of some stronger 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 113 

popular check, formal or informal, upon the general deter- 
minations of our federal courts.^ There exists, however, 
under the name of respect for the courts, a cult of judicial 
infallibility which, in its usual interpretation, is profoundly 
undemocratic, subtly demoralizing, and a menace to popular 
rule a hundred fold more damaging than a hundred adverse 
court decisions. The decision of the judges (in the absence 
of any present possibility of an appeal to the people) must be 
accepted until reversed, but whoever is opposed to such 
decision should be entitled to express his views in the same 
manner and in the same terms as against a decision of Presi- 
dent, congressman, governor, or alderman. The judge is 
entitled to respect, as is the senator, railway director, farmer, 
car conductor, or head waiter; but to shield him, or them, 
from candid adverse criticism, to create about him a special 
atmosphere, is extremely bad for clear thinking and demo- 
cratic enlightenment. The political institution which re- 
quires " prestige, ^^ pomp, or laws against contempt ; which 
cannot rely frankly upon popular support, is in a bad way. 
The comiis will maintain the respect of the people by being 
the servants of the people. ^ 

^ It was a sign of progress when a great political philosopher made the 
discovery that already the "Supreme Court follows the election returns." 

2 Some fifteen years ago, President William Howard Taft, then United 
States Judge, expressed himself as follows : — 

"The opportunity freely and publicly to criticise judicial action is of 
vastly more importance to the body politic than the immunity of courts 
and Judges from unjust aspersions and attack. Nothing tends more to 
render Judges careful in their decisions and anxiously solicitous to do exact 
justice than the consciousness that every act of theirs is to be submitted 
to the intelligent scrutiny and candid criticism of their fellow-men. In the 
case of Judges having a life tenure, indeed, their very independence makes 
the right freely to comment on their decisions of greater importance, be- 
cause it is the only practicable and available instrument in the hands of a 
free people to keep such Judges alive to the reasonable demands of those 
they serve." For a full statement of Mr. Taft's position, see Taft, William 
H., "Present Day Problems." New York (Dodd, Mead & Co.), 1908, 
p. 29 et seq. 



114 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Through the action of the courts in interpreting the Con- 
stitution, the widest possible powers have been given to a 
growing and entrenched plutocracy. According to President 
Arthur Twining Hadley, ^'the power of control by the Govern- 
ment was weakened and the rights and immunities of the 
property holders correspondingly strengthened by two events 
whose effect upon the modern industrial situation may be 
fairly characterized as fortuitous." One of these was the 
decision in the celebrated Dartmouth College case in 1819, 
which made a charter granted by a State a contract, the 
obUgation of which could not be impaired, and which thus 
protected midnight franchises against all future attacks by 
the legislature.^ The other was the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment to the Constitution, which, designed to protect the 
freedmen, has been interpreted primarily in behalf of the 
modern corporation. Since no State shall ^'deprive any per- 
son of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, 
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal 
protection of the laws" ; and since a corporation is a person 
in the sense of the amendment, therefore any corporation 
desiring to resist a State or local law may appeal for "equal 
protection" to the federal courts. The jurisdiction of the 
federal court having been sustained in 1882 in a case 
brought by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the 
door was opened in all cases of attempted regulation or taxa- 
tion to an intervention by federal tribunals, with resulting 
delays, and a weakening of the State and local authorities. 
The mere expense of prosecuting these cases in the federal 
courts, while of little moment to wealthy corporations, was 
often sufficiently onerous to the cit}^ or State government 

1 The evil force of this decision has been greatly lessened by subsequent 
decisions of the courts, limiting the extension of the Dartmouth decision, 
and by provisions in later State constitutions, requiring that all grants in 
future be made subject to revision by future legislatures, and that com- 
panies, desiring their charters amended, should subject themselves to 
similar conditions. 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 115 

to prevent needed regulation. President Hadley maintains 
that "the two (*' fortuitous") ^ decisions together have had 
the effect of placing the modern industrial corporation in an 
almost impregnable constitutional position/' ^'The funda- 
mental division of powers in the Constitution of the United 
States," says Professor Hadley, "is (not into executive, 
legislative, and judicial, but) between voters on the one hand 
and property owners on the other." The property rights 
so defended are essentially those of the "modern indus- 
trial corporation" in its "almost impregnable constitutional 
position." 

If the judicial appeal could be short, sharp, and decisive, 
if our justice were the simple and summary decision of an 
Eastern cadi, we might have a more even chance of an in- 
clining of the courts to the will of the democracy. Under 
present conditions in many States, however, the democracy 
would fare better by pitching up a penny or consulting a 
fortune teller than by appeahng to the courts. Our whole 
judicial system is so complicated and involuted that it often 
has the effect of breaking the force of the popular will. A bill, 
late after passage, may be declared unconstitutional, and 
arrangements made in conformity with it maybe retroactively 
voided. By a graduated system of appeals from courts of 
lower to courts of higher instance, by a subtly intricate and 
technical body of rules of evidence, by interminable delays 
working in the interest of the long purse, by a multiplicity 
of reversals and seK-reversals, no law, if contested, is sure of 
being carried into effect for many years. Even if, after a 
lapse of years, a State law is approved by all the courts, the 
political party originally advocating it may long since have 
passed out of power, because it has lost the support of people 

^ "I call their effect fortuitous because neither the judges who decided 
the Dartmouth College case nor the legislators who passed the Fourteenth 
Amendment had any idea how these things would affect the modern in- 
dustrial situation." President Hadley, The Independent, April 16, 1908. 



116 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

who want " to see something done." Later elections may 
have thrown the power back into the hands of the very in- 
terests who, by their injunctions and judicial appeals, have 
thwarted the will of the majority. New, often fictitious, 
issues have arisen ; the case of the people is defended by its 
secret enemies ; and gradually the reforming zeal dissipates 
itself and the proposed reform is forgotten. 

One might believe that the force of reaction could no 
farther go. As a result, however, of our rigid Constitu- 
tion ; of our checks and balances and hindrances and delays 
and vetoes, executive, legislative, and judicial; of our split 
authority and our attenuated responsibiUty, we have al- 
lowed to grow up still other obstacles to the effectuation of 
the popular will. For decades we tolerated in the almost 
avowed interest of the plutocracy an oligarchic control of 
the House of Representatives. Our system of congressional 
committees, says Professor J. Allen Smith,^ '' virtually gives 
a small body of men constituting a committee a veto on every 
legislative proposal," while according to Mr. Bryce,^ it 
'Ogives facilities for the exercise of underhand and even 
corrupt influence. In a small committee the voice of each 
member is well worth securing, and may be secured with 
little danger of a public scandal." The limitation of debate 
on the floor, the haste of the House, the hitherto arbitrary 
power of the Speaker to recognize members add to the ir- 
responsibility of the individual legislator, who, moreover, 
though he votes contrary to the expressed will of his con- 
stituents, cannot be recalled. We still needlessly hold to the 
traditional and indefensible custom of convening the new 
Congress not four months but thirteen months after election, 
and in the second session beginning in the December of every 
even year, our legislation is enacted by a '4ame-duck" Con- 

1 "The Spirit of American Government," New York (Macmillan), 
1907, pages 193-194. 

2 J' The American Commonwealth," Vol. I, Ch. 15. 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 117 

gress, by a House of Representatives which has already been 
superseded, and of which many members have been retired 
and are no longer held by the hope of reelection or the fear 
of defeat. ''It is then," said Congressman John F. Shafroth, 
''that some (Representatives) are open to propositions which 
they would never think of entertaining if they were to go 
before the people for reelection. It is then that the attorney- 
ship of some corporation is often tendered and a vote is 
afterward found in the record in favor of legislation of a 
general or special character favoring the corporation." ^ 

Our plutocracy secures its favored position in poHtics 
through the existence of a governmental system too com- 
plicated to be easily run or easily understood by a busy and 
engrossed people. It is through these complications and 
traditional absurdities of our political life, from our long, 
incomprehensible, and intentionally complicated ballot to 
our excessively complicated nominating systems, and from 
our gerrymandered electoral districts up to our needlessly 
complex judicial system, that the plutocracy is enabled to 
confound legislators and voters ; to set off one pubUc body 
against another ; to confuse issues and to throw a cloud of 
dust over the whole business of legislation. The plutocracy 
gains, and the democracy loses, through the complexity and 
artificiality of our governmental relations. 

Thus the plutocracy going into politics in order to defend 
its position in industry not only bribes and corrupts legis- 
lators and parties (as its lesser predecessors had done before 
it), but intrenches itself in the intricacies and convolu- 
tions of our federal system, and hides itself behind the most 
undemocratic features of our Constitution. Not only does 
it secure the legislation which it wants, and kill the legisla- 
tion which it fears (or is merely vaguely suspicious of), but 

* "When Congress should Convene," North American Review, Vol. 164. 
Mr. Shafroth recommends that the first session begin shortly after elec- 
tion day and the second session end before the succeeding election. 



118 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

it seeks to prevent even the beginnings of a real democracy, 
which may grow up to regulate the plutocracy. As poUtics 
become integrated, and poHtical enterprises, like business 
enterprises, are carried out on a larger scale, the plutocracy 
reUes less even on its own standardized corruption and be- 
gins to depend more upon its almost impregnable constitu- 
tional position and upon favoring judicial interpretations. 
Finally, the plutocratic influence on politics, once a series 
of unrelated forays by independent financial interests, tends 
to became merged; and the pohtical trust — in process — 
appears. 

This political trust, Uke the industrial trust of which it 
is the reflection, fights on inside lines. It is able to con- 
centrate all its forces at one point, to turn its organized 
energies upon any single, isolated manifestation of rebeUion. 
Like the industrial trust it seeks to hold a monopoly of 
power. 

Inevitably, however, this political trust, like the industrial 
trust, becomes visible, and with its visibihty, the countervail- 
ing and curative forces of democracy multiply astoundingly. 
Antagonists spring up. At first the pohtical trust seeks to 
''buy up" all these strike competitors; especially the dem- 
agogues and ''tribunes of the people," who spectacularly 
hate the trust, but who, without surrendering their invec- 
tives, endure, then pity, then embrace. Yet the more they 
are bought up, the more there are to buy up, since oppo- 
nents, Uke rabbits and rattlesnakes, thrive best when there 
is a bounty upon their heads. The party machines which 
the pohtical trust buys tend to lose their effectiveness as the 
fact becomes known, just as newspapers, known to be owned 
by antidemocratic interests, tend to lose their influence 
with the democracy. The ahgnment of the people beyond 
party Hnes, or in new parties, or in old parties reconstituted, 
proceeds as the workings of the pohtical trust become 
visible, so that he who votes may read. 



THE PLUTOCRACY IN POLITICS 119 

This development, with the resulting conflict, is as yet only 
in process, but with each year the opposition to the plutocratic 
control of poHtics become more obdurate and determined. 
New methods are devised to prevent bribery of legislators, 
executives, and judges ; to place poUtical parties under pop- 
ular control ; to simplify legislation and administration ; to 
facihtate appeals from legislators to pubhc opinion. Step by 
step the invasion of the plutocracy into politics is accom- 
panied by an invasion of the democracy into poUtics ; by 
the creation of a more tenacious and intelHgent interest in 
poHtical affairs ; by the rise of a new democratic spirit. 

As a result of this growing conflict, certain new truths are 
being learned by both sides. It is being recognized, both by 
democratic and anti-democratic leaders, that our political 
forms are not a last will and testament of a dead sovereign, 
but are themselves as mutable as the things which they 
regulate. Our laws and ordinances, our constitutions and 
precedents, even the inflexible Constitution of the United 
States, are all subject in final analysis to revision, review, and 
abrogation by the dehberate judgment and the determined 
will of the even now potentially sovereign people. Our 
checks and balances and vetoes, our poHtical quahfications, 
prerogatives, conditions, and statuses ; our statutes of limi- 
tation and perpetual guarantees; in fact, all our political 
institutions, however ancient and honorable, are but creatures 
of a people who, having made, may umnake, who, having 
given, may take away. In a nation which contains within 
itself the quahties which make for true democracy, the final 
arbiter of all relations, industrial, poUtical, and social, is the 
people ; the ultimate standard of values, the ultimate sanc- 
tion, is not legal but moral. 

To this definitive moral judgment of the people, in process 
of becoming sovereign, the plutocracy must finally appeal. 
Just as it went into the legislature and the secret chamber of 
the political boss to defend its franchises and privileges, 



120 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

present and prospective, so now it far-sightedly comes into 
the larger arena of public opinion. It is its right. What it 
has to say in self -justification should be said out loud in news- 
papers, magazines, and books ; in the pulpit, on the stage, 
in the schools and universities, wherever two or three gather 
together to discuss public things. Whether the nation will 
be democratic or plutocratic in its philosophy, whether it 
will learn from both parties and borrow from both, must be 
decided by open discussion in an open forum. The ultimate 
struggle is a struggle for public opinion. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 

THE plutocracy, to control the market and the ballot box, 
must control also the mind of the nation. It there- 
fore invests the last citadel, pubhc opinion. 

There can be no fair objection to an open advocacy of the 
plutocracy's ideals and purposes. To every shade of thought, 
religious, scientific, pohtical, economic, and social ; to every 
craze, fad, dogma, heresy, and inspiration ; there should be 
accorded a forum, a soap box, a ton of type, and, subject to 
a subsequent responsibihty for utterances, full liberty of 
speech and print. The more frankly the plutocracy speaks 
out in its accredited journals or elsewhere under its signature, 
the better for it and its opponents. It has a perfect moral 
right to flood the country with its ^ literature,'' provided such 
writings show their source as clearly as does a legal brief. 

When, however, we speak of the conquest of the press by 
the plutocracy, we have in mind not an open and candid 
advocacy, but a subtle, devious, and anonymous campaign 
of suppression, misrepresentation, and falsehood. In secur- 
ing publicity, as in securing pohtical power, the weapon of 
the plutocracy is the weapon of all wealthy minorities, the 
corrupt and secret use of money. The plutocracy quietly 
plants itself at strategic places on the avenues to the public 
mind, where it can exact its toll of the news and temper the 
truth to a shorn people. When it buys a journal or a poli- 
tician, it does not advertise the fact. The pirate ship flies 
a peaceful flag; the wolf in sheep's clothing is sedulously 
taught to browse. 

The broad avenues leading to public opinion are the daily 

121 



122 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

newspaper, the weekly or monthly magazine, the trade 
journal, the book, the acted play, the sermon from the 
pulpit, the lesson in the class, the lecture in the university. 
Of these, the most influential is the periodical press, and 
more especially, the penny newspaper. 

Americans are voracious newspaper readers. Our prob- 
lems are so manifold that no one can understand everything ; 
our ninety million neighbors are so unutterably beyond direct 
personal contact that we must trust to the printed word. 
In a small Swiss canton or a New England township, pubUc 
opinion may be independent of a periodical press. The 
public opinion of a great and dispersed nation is halt and 
Mind and dumb without its morning paper. 

Now the newspaper is conceived to be a mirror and a 
mentor. It is expected to give the news with the gusto of 
a town-crier and the impartiaUty of a phonograph. Its 
function is to narrate to every section of the community, 
from the baseball ''fans'^ and the chess players to the 
financiers and the men about town, all the happenings 
which they require to know for their business or pleasure. 
As news-gatherer, it is not presumed to be above its patrons, 
and it dutifully gives information about prize fights which 
in its editorial columns it becomingly condemns. At the 
same time, by reason of a virtue inhering in the editorial 
"we," the newspaper is supposed, like the chorus of an antique 
play, to provide with the news a running moral commentary, 
to expound, interpret, prophesy, and enthuse. 

But the newspaper, for better or worse, is not a heaven- 
endowed instrument, independent of terrestrial condi- 
tions and considerations. JournaUsm is a business, hke 
politics, brewing, and agriculture. Like all businesses, 
it is subject to the prevaiUng money economy. A journal 
may be ever so independent in poUtics, but it is never, 
except in a few negligible cases, independent of money 
or the need of profits. It is through profits, that cours- 



< 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 123 

ing life-blood of all commercial enterprises, that the virus 
of corruption enters into the body of journalism. 

A generation or two ago the influence of money upon jour- 
nalism was smaller than it is to-day. The thin little news- 
papers of those days depended for survival and success upon 
their subscribers, other sources of income being practically 
negligible. Frequently these papers were poor, usually 
intemperate, often ignorant, but they were always stripped 
for action, and were not readily muzzled or bought. The 
untempted editor, perhaps a college graduate, perhaps a 
semi-informed typesetter, towered above the inconspicuous 
and adventitious advertiser, and high above Wall Street, 
Lombard Street, and all the serried hosts of Mammon. 
After all, it did not pay to corrupt newspapers which sprang 
up like mushrooms in many dark places. So long as men 
had as free access to journalism as to the continent, so 
long as any youth who could borrow a hand press might 
start a new journal in garret or hall bedroom, there was 
no great encouragement to the financiers to pit their in- 
fluence against the omnipresent influence of the newspaper 
reader. 

Within the last generation the fundamental conditions 
of the newspaper business have so changed as to make 
journals far more susceptible to financial blandishments. 
Advertisers, finding printer's ink more efficacious than 
painted signs, sandwich-men, and barkers, invaded the 
newspapers. As a result of the standardization of business, 
the producer was enabled to appeal with his one standard 
soap or fountain pen over the heads of the middlemen 
directly to the people, and this big producer advertised 
through newspaper and magazine, whereas the middle- 
man had used the modest handbill. Advertising became 
increasingly profitable, and the advertisement-swollen jour- 
nals, especially after the advent of the lineotype, grew in 
bulk, if not in specific gravity. Since advertising value 



124 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

depends upon circulation, the newspaper, in order to secure 
circulation, was forced to offer itself to the reader for much 
less than cost. Two thirds of the newspaper revenues 
came from advertising business interests; news and edi- 
torial became a pendant to commercial offerings. The 
newspaper reader, though he had never asked for alms, 
had become pauperized. 

Year by yeg-r, the subservience of the editorial to the 
business policy of the newspaper becomes more apparent. 
It is a matter of common knowledge, reenforced by much 
direct evidence, that many journals will not print news 
adverse to local department stores. Rather the loss of a 
thousand subscribers than the slightest animadversion upon 
these Atlases of city journalism. Pubhc franchise cor- 
porations, banks, railroads, and other great undertakings 
enjoy a lesser, though still considerable, immunity. Some 
journals maintain a black hst of proscribed people, to be 
ignored or persistently ridiculed, and a corresponding 
white Hst of happy immunes, who may indulge in treason, 
parricide, or sacrilege without fear of the interviewer. 
Scandalous actions by prot^g^s are covered with the cloak 
of kindly silence, for our press, though communicative, 
knows how to keep a secret. A sensational suicide is 
omitted from the newspaper to make room for an advertise- 
ment from the suicide's father. Of course, if any jour- 
nal turns State's evidence, and, from good motives or bad, 
blurts out the truth, the conspiracy of silence gives way 
to a conspicuous competition to furnish the greatest num- 
ber of columns upon the hitherto forbidden topic. 

Such suppression of specific news (some of which might 
well be generally suppressed, or at least telescoped), while, 
under the circumstances, immoral and invidious, does 
not constitute a transcendent factor in the society-wide 
struggle between plutocracy and democracy. It is rather 
a transgression yro domo; a taking care of one's friends. 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 125 

Of greater importance is an influence which the plu- 
tocracy learns to exert upon the general tone of newspapers. 
There are many ways of exerting this influence without 
an actual purchase of the journal. In a choice between 
approximately equal mediums of pubUcity, a great adver- 
tiser often favors journals which more closely approxi- 
mate his views. A trust pays directly or indirectly for the 
printing of news or comment, valuable to it individually, 
or to big business generally. It furnishes free copy, together 
with paid advertising. It subsidizes the furnishing of 
''boiler-plate'' material to country papers. As the great 
journalistic enterprises grow, as the margin of loss on each 
copy is spread over a larger circulation, as the necessity 
for credit facilities increases, the plutocracy, through its 
control of a hierarchy of banks, sets its seal upon the pol- 
icy of an increasing number of journals. The owner of the 
paper, usually a man of wealth and debts, is subjected to 
financial pressure upon his newspaper and outside ven- 
tures, as well as to social and poUtical pressure. 

The trend of plutocratic domination of the press has been 
from influence to control and from control to ownership. The 
newspaper in the course of time became for men of large wealth 
a personal asset greater than was represented by its ac- 
tual money profits. It was Hke the old court which went 
with the manor, in which justice might be dispensed, im- 
munity sold, or private vengeance wreaked. The pur- 
chased newspaper might offer sanctuary to the wealthy 
transgressor, who knew not where to lay his reputation. 
It might, with every semblance of virtue, surreptitiously 
connive at its owner's raid upon the public treas- 
ury. The progressive development of the newspaper busi- 
ness tended to increase this plutocratic ownership of pa- 
pers, in whole or in part. Divorced from the dwindling 
personality of its editor, become a thing of stocks and bonds, 
the newspaper soon became vendible in parts, and sub- 



126 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ject to that law of business integration by which small 
enterprises tend to become subsidiary to larger ones. As 
the trust often bought out the poUtical party, instead of 
continuing to buy its product, legislation, so it now bought 
out its needed newspapers, instead of continuing to buy 
their products, predigested news, and steriUzed editorials. 

This influence of the plutocracy over the press, like its 
influence over the political party, was not obtained in the 
first instance as the result of a class-conscious policj^ but 
by each man securing the pubhcity facilities which he 
needed for his business or preferment. As time went on, 
however, the plutocracy's control of pubhcity, like its con- 
trol of politics, became standardized, systematized, and 
subtilized. It became possible for large corporations 
to lend each other their respective publicity, like their 
political, facilities. The daily of an Eastern street rail- 
way magnate defended all manner of spoliation in West 
and North and South. A ''ring" newspaper in a Middle 
Western city fought direct primaries on the Pacific Coast. 
A newspaper taking the popular side in a local contest 
found that it was offending a larger advertiser, who was 
a financial dependent of a beneficiary of an ally of the in- 
terests attacked. Large corporations conducted publicity 
departments through astute newspaper men, who knew 
the journahstic ropes as the paid lobbyist knew the legis- 
lative ropes. The campaign of the corporation was spe- 
cific and subtle. So long as it secured what it wanted, 
silence or a defense, the corporation did not care how rabid 
was the newspaper in general discussions. In publicity 
as in politics, bought demagogues had their place and office, 
and were not without their reward. 

The control over publicity becomes more systematic 
as the newspaper business becomes concentrated. Dur- 
ing the last fifteen years the number of newspapers has been 
rapidly declining in proportion to population, and an en- 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 127 

larging share of the circulation is going to a relatively 
decreasing number of journals. Chains of newspapers are 
established in various cities, and unacknowledged alli- 
ances are formed between papers controlled by allied busi- 
ness interests. The old resort of the pubhc — to start a 
new Journal — is no longer so available. The success of 
such new and independent journals becomes problemati- 
cal, because of the competition of venal periodicals, sub- 
sidized by advertisers, or maintained by big business in- 
terests at a profitable loss. The strategic value* of the 
venal paper may be heightened by its being a member 
in a powerful and rigorously exclusive press association, 
membership in which gives a monopoly value, superior to 
that of membership in a stock exchange. A new journal 
of protest might not even secure a news service. 

In the matter of journalistic independence we are los- 
ing the safety which inheres in a multitude of counselors. 
We are putting our eggs into one basket. 

But the advantage of putting your eggs into one bas- 
ket is that you are more likely to watch that basket. De- 
spite the greater control of newspaper publicity by the 
plutocracy, that control remains qualified, partial, and 
subject to certain counteracting and curative forces. 

In the first place many of the faults of our garrulous 
and somewhat slipshod and unveracious press are due 
not to the plutocracy, as we love to believe, but to our 
own careless, exaggerating, and scandal-loving selves. 
On our sober days we protest against the journaHstic pur- 
veying of lies. We long for a pure food law which would 
apply to intellectual aliments, which would compel an edi- 
tor to give with each newspaper "story'' the exact propor- 
tions of suppression, indirection, false emphasis, subtle 
detraction, and other ingredients. And yet, we millions of 
readers do not skip the highly improbable and dubious 
details of a murder, accident, or divorce to improve our 



128 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

minds with an editorial on the ^'Reform of Procedure in 
Magistrates Courts." In our discursive newspaper read- 
ing we seem to prefer recreation to culture, vivacity to 
exactness, and two half-truths to one whole one. 

Still more important is the fact, almost invariably over- 
looked, that much of the vilification in which some of our 
newspapers indulge is in the supposed interest, not of the 
plutocracy, but of ourselves, the great crowd. ^ Many 
unpopular causes, good and bad, are subjected to an habit- 
ual misrepresentation; many men, good and bad, who do 
not square with popular beliefs and prejudices, are over- 
whelmed with an unbelievable mass of printed false- 
hood. There are some plutocratic journals which are 
above these man-hunts, just as there are some democratic 
journals which delight in them. The cure for these jour- 
nalistic lynchings, unlike the cure of other newspaper evils, 
lies not in the democratization of the press, but in the in- 
tellectual and moral progress of the democracy. 

Not all the evils connected with our rapid newspaper 
growth are due to the plutocracy. Not all attempts to 
"influence" the press are successful. Our editors have 
their full share of our common instinctive honesty, and 
journalistic probity does not succumb to a single temptation.^ 

* Newspapers, like statesmen, generals, authors, saloon-bullies, and the 
rest of us, like to have the backing of the crowd. Even the debauched 
journal, hugging the illusion of its innocence, delights to gain even the tem- 
porary approval of a public to which it is bound by the dual hope of sub- 
scription and advertisement. Like Falstaff, it will not "turn upon the 
true prince," but is "a coward on instinct." But when, backed by a 
million careless readers, it attacks one friendless man or one lonely woman ; 
when, in defense of things which have been believed for all time, it makes 
a desperate charge against the first, halting, half-formulated conception 
of a new truth, not the Numidian lion may compare with it for courage. 

2 While some struggling journals buy their independence at an enormous 
financial sacrifice, others, with greater money resources, lightly sell them- 
selves on a cold calculation of profits. There are great newspapers — 
prominent and decorous — who surrender themselves to a sleek political 
prostitution without the excuse either of passion or poverty. 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 129 

A certain safety lies in the multiplicity of forces influenc- 
ing the newspaper. It seldom if ever happens that all ad- 
vertisers, or a large majority, desire the suppression of the 
identical news, or the printing of the identical falsehood, 
even though many of them may be agreed upon a more or 
less definite deflection of newspaper poUcy. Many ad- 
vertisers have the same interests as have the readers. 
Advertisers are, after all, primarily interested in selling 
goods, not in distorting facts or in expounding political 
philosophies. Again, the value of the newspaper to the 
advertiser depends upon its readers, and, since readers 
fall off if they do not get what they think is the news, the 
paper is often obhged to sacrifice an advertiser or two for 
the sake of a pregnant circulation. Such a policy pleases 
advertisers unaffected by the particular ^' story," since it 
gives the ^independent" journal a prestige which casts 
a reflected glory on the men who advertise in its columns. 

Although much news is suppressed and other news 
is colored, although, by reason of the veto of moneyed men, 
the editorials often tend to become vapid and timid, yet 
it is perhaps no great exaggeration to say that the man who 
pays his penny for the newspaper exerts in the mass, even 
to-day, a more open, if not actually a stronger, influence 
upon its expressed opinion than the ten-thousand-dollar 
advertiser or the million-dollar creditor. The pressure 
of the plutocracy is less insistent upon the journal than 
upon the political party, because the newspaper reader 
votes every day and enjoys the privilege of initiative, refer- 
endum, and recall. If he does not like the paper, he changes 
without so much as a letter to the editor. 

The venal newspaper is thus like the rope in a tug of war. 
The subscribers pull it their way by the impHed threat 
to withdraw their pennies; financial groups exercise their 
*'puir' through the threat of withdrawing advertisements 
or credit. The editor, once a power and a voice, has ceased 



130 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

to be anything but an umpire, the paid servant of the owner, 
who in turn is the servant of his customers. The journal, 
acknowledging a double or even a multiple allegiance, 
becomes intellectually and morally cross-eyed. 

The result is that each element in the community re- 
ceives from the venal newspaper what it is able to extort 
or willing to purchase. In many of our great city journals, 
workingmen, who (because of their smaller general pur- 
chasing capacity) are among the less valuable of sub- 
scribers, do not receive fair treatment in news or edito- 
rial, but are promise-crammed, and fed with large phrases. 
Ignorant groups receive a counterfeit sympathy but no real 
assistance. The inteUigent reader, on the other hand, is 
a formidable and imperious person, who gets in journal- 
ism what he wants, or something like it, not only because 
his penny is needed, but because if he does not read the 
paper, the advertiser will not advertise in it. As for the 
bias of the paper, the intelligent reader learns it and dis- 
counts it. He does not follow the editorial — at least, not 
very far. The editorial follows him. As for the news, he 
does not believe what he reads, but reads what he beheves. 

Potentially, the subscribers are more powerful than any 
corrupting financial interests, because in the final analy- 
sis, a journal is not a journal unless read. Actually, the 
subscribers are effective in proportion as they are intelli- 
gent and unitedly determined that the news shall be un- 
sophisticated, and the editorials their own. Adultera- 
tion of news, hke adulteration of other products for sale, 
is incited by profits, but is hmited by the public's recog- 
nition that the article is adulterated. 

The influence of the plutocracy on the newspaper, even 
on the newspaper which it secretly owns, is thus so circum- 
scribed that its teachings are necessarily subtle, and its 
suggestions indirect. The plutocracy does not proclaim 
that political corruption, misery, slums, unequal distri- 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 131 

bution of wealth, and other present-day evils are good. 
We could not be made to believe it. Nor are we taught 
that democracy is bad. We could not be made to beUeve 
that. We are rather taught that while evil exists, proposed 
remedies are always worse. We are cautioned against 
flying to evils that we know not of ; against following our 
natural leaders; against adopting any of the means nec- 
essary to attain the democratic ends so grudgingly ap- 
proved. 

The plutocratic influence on public opinion, in so far 
as it is not merely an effort to justify certain men or par- 
ticular financial manipulations, is directed in this covert 
manner against innovation. The doctrine of 'Het well 
enough alone'' is advocated by those who prosper inordi- 
nately. Our conservative traditions are fulsomely praised, 
while democratic experiments are derided and their in- 
evitable failure prophesied. The appeal is always to the 
old. New laws and constitutions are too likely to be demo- 
cratic. For the mass of new ideas fermenting in popu- 
lar movements (in the democracies of 1800 and 1828, in 
the AboHtionist, Free Soil, Early Republican, Labor, Popu- 
list, Sociahst parties), for all manifestations of democratic 
humanitarianism, the plutocracy has, and has always had, 
nothing but contempt — and fear. The plutocracy exalts 
good, old, judicial precedents, and its patriotism takes on 
a mellow, meerschaum, retrospective tinge, which is mere 
reactionism, as opposed to a patriotism which looks forward 
to a better America. 

The plutocracy preaches individual liberty, the glorious 
fruits of free contract, the doctrine of the influence of good 
men, the survival of the fittest in business, an untram- 
meled individuahsm, a tame state with a ring through 
its nose. It believes that while government is wise enough 
to put us in jail, it is not honest enough to be intrusted 
with our money or our business. The plutocracy throws 



132 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the mantle of property rights over things improperly ob- 
tained. It decries confiscation, specifying measures of 
taxation and regulation, not confiscatory in intention. 
It tolerates discussion but opposes ''agitation." It ad- 
mits popular rights but decries the ''mob." It combats 
the representation of the weaker elements in the commu- 
nity by "agitators," "demagogues" and "walking dele- 
gates." Finally, in its appeal to the God of things as they 
are, the plutocracy places its faith in checks, balances, 
safeguards, and the letter of an obsolescent law. 

But the plutocracy, much against its will, must defend 
too much. Sharing the same political bed with httle crooks, 
it is obliged from time to time to plead their cause before 
the tribunal of public opinion. The respectable jour- 
nals of respectable, free-booting financiers must occasion- 
ally defend the immigrant bank against the defrauded immi- 
grant, the sweatshop against the sweated, the loan shark 
against his dupe, even the ward bruiser against the com- 
plaining citizen. Democracy in small things must often 
be checked, because by a rigorous logic it may be extended 
to big things. The plutocrat does not like the stunting 
of the poor, but laws intended to prevent poverty may 
shatter the very foundations of privilege. The plutoc- 
racy — no wiser than the rest of us — is a little confused. 
It has bad dreams. It is alternately too rash and too tim- 
orous. It does not always know what to do with its news- 
papers after it has bought them. 

Moreover, in its control of the newspaper, the plutoc- 
racy has not to deal with an inert public opinion, which 
cannot strike back. Just as the plutocracy's control of 
industry and of politics evokes a spirit of revolt, so its 
more partial control of the newspaper, as it becomes visi- 
ble, evokes a more or less distinct reaction within pubHc 
opinion against the plutocracy. Newspapers which too 
openly espouse the plutocracy's cause often lose in cir- 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 133 

culation to journals assuming a more popular attitude. 
Simultaneously new journals of protest arise, winning their 
way against great financial obstacles, and a fresh outlet for 
pubHc opinion is evolved in the popular, '"muck-raking," 
reformatory magazine. 

The magazine suffers, like the newspaper, from the very 
conditions which make for its extension and popularity; 
in other words, from a preponderance of advertising reve- 
nues, and a circulation at a price below cost. Being national 
in scope, however, it is at least freer from local pressure, 
and it is never so dependent upon a single class of adver- 
tisers as is the city newspaper upon the department stores. 
Moreover, because of its freedom from narrow geographical 
limits, it is able to seek from the enormous population 
of the country a larger number of like-minded people. 
Consequently, the popular magazine is perhaps more sim- 
ple, direct, progressive, and dignified than is the daily news- 
paper, and despite the narrow gauntlet which it runs, be- 
tween its increasing cost of production and its lowered price, 
it has hitherto managed better than the newspaper to 
maintain its independence. To a considerable extent the 
reformatory magazine is a powerful antidote to those of our 
newspapers which, while much-protesting against distant 
evils, are singularly charitable towards offenders nearer 
home. 

While the magazine, Hke other business organs of pub- 
licity, does not therefore enjoy an absolute freedom in 
choosing sides, still the tendency during the last decade 
seems to have been towards an increasing circulation and 
profitableness of periodicals representing democratic ideals, 
or, what is even more important, of periodicals impar- 
tially presenting in a popular manner the facts of our 
contemporary life, upon which democratic action may ulti- 
mately be based. It is not impossible, of course, nor even 
improbable, that an increasingly determined attempt will 



134 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

be made by financial interests, hostile to democracy, to 
secure control of the magazines. In repelling such attacks, 
however, the magazine reader should be more successful 
than is the newspaper reader, for the reader is less de- 
pendent upon the magazine than upon the newspaper, 
while the magazine is even more dependent than is 
the newspaper upon the reader. The reader^s prefer- 
ences in magazines are balanced to the finest point, and 
the slightest change in policy, by pleasing or displeas- 
ing the million, may mean .stupendous success or irretriev- 
able failure. Our magazines, like ourselves, are very far 
from our ideal, but their merits are our merits, and their 
faults, our faults. The magazine, though often trivial, some- 
times banal, and occasionally vicious and timidly obscene, 
is on the whole more representative of the majority of 
the people than is the newspaper. 

Even were all magazines and newspapers to be controlled 
and muzzled (which is hardly conceivable) it would not 
be possible to hold down the popular intelHgence. The 
medieval method of cutting off thought by cutting off 
the head is no longer applicable. Truth to-day is a vol- 
atile gas, a great deal of which will escape through a very 
small hole. Close up the newspapers, close up the maga- 
zines, and truth will flow out through other outlets. 

Of such outlets there are many. A wide and free forum 
is provided by books, which, whatever their tendency or 
bias, can be printed if a thousand people will buy them. 
An enormous amount of uncontrolled literature in the 
form of pamphlets, circulars, reports of societies, etc., is 
constantly circulated. Nor is there an effective censor- 
ship of the play. The Theatrical Trust, although on pleas- 
ure bent, preserves a frugal mind, and this obedient, un- 
discerning servant of the two-dollar-an-evening pubHc 
would as soon scuttle a ship as sacrifice box receipts to 
the preachment of reactionary principles. As for pulpit 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 135 

utterances — if sermons are directed too exclusively to the 
solace of the wealth-burdened, the poor stay from church. 

Even our privately endowed universities, dependent for 
the bulk of their revenues upon the free gifts of the plu- 
tocracy, follow the general direction of the popular mind, 
and give to it tone, character, and an ethical interpretation. 
Although men have been released from University faculties 
because of their expressed opinions, and others have not 
been appointed because of their anticipated views, still 
academic freedom seems to be rather on the increase than 
on the decrease. Curiously enough, while there has been 
a certain pernicious influence of great fortunes upon Uni- 
versity teaching, it is quite credible that every million 
contributed to universities out of our existing inequality 
of wealth renders a similar inequality less probable in the 
future. Political economy is taught by professors of chem- 
istry, physics, and gymnastics, as well as by professors 
of political economy. Let the alma mater be ever so cir- 
cumspect, her children will not escape contamination. 
Just as in the early pre-aseptic days hospitals were more 
dangerous than slums or battle fields, so to-day you are 
as likely to catch new ideas in a trust-endowed university 
as in a factory or a tenement house. Despite itself, the 
plutocracy subsidizes discontent and revolt. The plu- 
tocracy teaches more than it knows. 

The issue is not yet decided, but as we review the field, 
it seems as though the plutocracy^s assault upon public 
opinion, like its assault upon politics, invites its own failure 
by invoking a redoubled defense. The plutocracy strives 
for the possession of derelict newspapers and magazines; 
the popular mind strives for self-possession. The price 
of intellectual liberty and intactness is not only intellectual 
development, but eternal vigilance. 

It is because of this vigilance, because of a constant, 
though casual, relation which the people maintain towards 



136 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the organs of public opinion, that the plutocracy's control 
of the pubhc mind is by no means complete. After all, 
the newspaper, the magazine, and the printed book are 
merely organs of public opinion. They are not public 
opinion itself. Back of them all Ues the mind of the nation, 
fed by sights, sounds, conversations ; a mind more or less 
excitable and transient in its manifestations, but main- 
taining itself for the most part with a certain tenacious 
sanity. Not all the combined organs of public opinion can 
convert the population to lies too gross and palpable, nor 
to truths too unpleasant, and a thousand '^special articles" 
cannot prove that the shoe does not pinch. Bruises and 
pains teach as well as sermons, and a butcher's bill may 
be more edifying than an eloquent editorial. 

The growing wisdom of the people is the final and irre- 
futable answer to the plutocracy's attempts to corner the 
intellectual market. More and more the people insist 
upon doing some of their own thinking. 

Now the voice of the people, the adage to the contrary, 
is not necessarily the voice of God. In some lands and 
at some times it is but a babbling, obscene, and intol- 
erant clamor. PubUc opinion may either be, as Sir Robert 
Peel defined it, a ^^ great compound of folly, weakness, 
prejudice, wrong feehng, right feeling, obstinacy, and news- 
paper paragraphs, " or it may be the temperate, slowly formed, 
and definitely formulated consensus of a free and resolute 
people. In countries used to its rule, it is more responsible 
and inteUigent than in lands where it is violent because 
repressed. Public opinion in Switzerland, the home of 
the referendum, is very different from public opinion in 
Nicaragua or Liberia. 

In the United States, despite racial and territorial cleav- 
ages (which are boimd to be wide on a continent settled 
by immigrants), we have a broad and fairly coherent public 
opinion. This is in part due to our comparative freedom 



THE PLUTOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 137 

of speech and press, our political and religious tolerance, 
our varied facilities for interchanging ideas and manifold- 
ing words, our relative intelligence, our diffused prosperity, 
and our possession of formal political rights. ''In no coun- 
try,^* says Mr. Bryce, ''is public opinion so powerful as in 
the United States.'^ 

This public opinion is at times still confused and self- 
contradictory, or else uninformed, dwarfed, and hysterical, 
and occasionally it degenerates into mob opinion, and for 
brief moments whirls in dangerous, ineffectual eddies. 
Nevertheless no one can fairly study its manifestations 
during the generation since Mr. Bryce wrote without being 
convinced that it is daily becoming more powerful and 
beneficent. It sweeps over opposition, brushes aside legal 
technicaHties, and, attaching itself to democratic leaders, 
backs them up against great odds. This pubhc opinion 
emancipates itself even from the newspaper by widening 
the field of intellectual supply. The average city man now 
takes two newspapers. He also reads one or two maga- 
zines. He comes in hourly contact with men who derive 
their information from still other sources. Like his coun- 
try neighbor, he is less stereotyped than was his father. 
He is also more wisely skeptical. 

To-day pubHc opinion is seeking to become the ruling 
power in America. No overt opposition can withstand it. 
It cannot be bribed. It cannot be stifled. To overcome 
it, the people must be fooled, and, year by year, it is becom- 
ing more difficult to fool them. 

In the end, therefore, the plutocracy must rest its case 
on the soUd ground of truth. The body of doctrine which 
it pours into press, pulpit, and university is retarding, — 
but that is all. Evasions, appeals to prejudice, artfully 
induced misconceptions, half-truths, quarter-truths, and 
plain Hes all have their day, as have lurid exaggerations, 
acrid personalities, and vague, sensational charges. Abuse 



138 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

does not last. You can drown a single individual in printer^s 
ink, but great causes and solemn charges somehow survive 
leaded columns and italicized ridicule. When the whirl of 
apologies, charges, and countercharges subsides, as it always 
does subside, the result is a clearing of the field and a join- 
ing of the plain issue, whether the nation will be ruled 
poHtically by industrial despots, or whether it will stumble 
forward to both political and industrial democracy. The 
plutocracy brought before the court of highest instance is 
at last compelled formally to plead. 



4 



CHAPTER X 

PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 

THE plutocracy rests its defense upon the ground of 
historical necessity. It has come to be because it 
was the fittest to be. It survives because it meets our 
national needs. What though it be ugly, smoky, noisy, 
parsimonious, murderous, if, all things considered, the 
plutocracy is the most economical form of national or- 
ganization, then it will live. It can cure itself of minor ills. 
It can outgrow youthful immoderations, for the plutocracy, 
it must be remembered, is still very young. The plutocracy 
believes that the American will not exchange an effective 
for an ineffective business organization. He will not 
quarrel with his bread and butter. 

The plutocracy claims to be a progressive, upbuilding 
force. It denies that it is reactionary, as was the oligarchic 
slave power, to which it has been likened. While, politically, 
our plutocracy is on a lower level than was the slave power 
(because depending on bribery and corruption), it is in- 
dubitably in the van of one form of economic progress. 
Our business princes develop territories, resuscitate indus- 
tries, create new by-products. 

The plutocracy cites many pages of statistics to prove 
(what is already evident) that during its domination we 
have been growing stupendously wealthy. One cannot read 
our government bulletins or the files of technical journals; 
one cannot glance over the daily paper or walk through the 
streets, without realizing that in everything which pertains 
to material progress we are moving at a giant's pace. 
The trust puts an end to the waste and brutality of an 

139 



140 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

unregulated business war. The trust imposes peace. It 
may be the peace of industrial despotism. But it is peace. ^ 
The plutocracy admits that in the conflict with com- 
petitive business the trust often won illegally. But illegahty 
was equally the weapon of its rivals, and a too scrupulous 
respect for the law was never a condition of the contest. 
Even without §uch illegahties the trust would have been 
eventually victorious, ^ for its being was decreed by the 
law of business evolution. Even trusts burdened by an 
excessive capitalization survived and prospered, because 
they gave a greater profit than their constituent companies 
had done. Combination, where possible, made competition 
impossible, and, if combination resulted in monopoly and 

1 A comparison might be drawn between our trusts and the political 
despotisms which grew up with the nations in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 
seventeenth centuries. These despotisms represented politically the bud- 
ding national consciousness; the trusts represent, in the same despotic 
way, the national unity of business. The absolute monarch of the six- 
teenth century put down the feudal lords with a high hand. He either 
attainted the nobles, and confiscated their estates, or, by compelling their 
attendance at court, divorced them from their followers. In a similar 
manner our industrial despot crushes his competitors and confiscates their 
businesses. Or he buys them out and compels their attendance at direc- 
tors' meetings. Even the personalities of some of the old nation builders 
illustrate the temper of our trust builders. We have among us to-day 
the craft and subtlety of a Louis the Eleventh of France, the narrow in- 
tensity of a Philip the Second of Spain ; the avariciousness of a Henry the 
Seventh of England ; the intensely ambitious bonhomie of a Henry of Na- 
varre; the overweening self -consciousness of a "grand monarch" who 
could boast ''UEtat c'est moi.'' Finally, before we leave this comparison, 
which is, of course, merely illustrative, our despotic plutocracy, after van- 
quishing the business leaders, finds itself face to face with the broader 
masses of the people, just as the Bourbons, having at last made France one, 
found themselves on a certain summer day of 1789 face to face with an 
awakened French nation. 

» Had the Standard Oil Company not secured a practical monopoly of 
the oil business through railroad rebates in the seventies and eighties, It 
is highly probable that either that company, or some other, would have 
been formed in 1901 (or earlier) for the purpose of securing control of the 
entire oil business. 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 141 

extortion, these were, after all, goals to which each com- 
petitor of the trust had secretly aspired. 

Because of its alleged efficiency, the plutocracy claims 
remission of past sins and indulgence for future transgres- 
sions. We forgave the pioneer his crudity, recklessness, 
and exaggerated individualism, because for his time he 
made the most effective use of the still unconquered con- 
tinent. We then sent gentlemen to Congress whom we 
should now send to jail, and we then rewarded with for- 
tunes men who might to-day end in almshouses. At the 
present time, on this argument, our toleration of the old 
individualist should descend to the equally typical repre- 
sentatives of a new economic development. The over- 
whelming of the citizens at the polls and in the primaries, 
the rise of a more subtle and ramified political corruption, 
the evolution of a powerful boss, were but the political 
expression of a contemporaneous economic evolution, the rise 
of the trust. And this stupendous development, the plutoc- 
racy insists, was but a step in a progress from chaos to 
order; a step towards a wiser, and longer-viewed exploita- 
tion of the continent. 

Not only does the plutocracy assert that this end justifies 
the means, but it also claims that, because of its higher in- 
dustrial organization, it has a broader ethical basis and a wider 
program of social reform than had the competitive business 
which preceded it. Not being so hard pressed as were its 
forerunners, the plutocracy can afford a little virtue. Or, 
rather, it cannot afford not to have a little virtue, for our 
growing business concentration has changed the incidence 
of certain industrial evils, so that they who cause the damage 
occasionally suffer from it. From considerations of policy 
as well as because of its acknowledged leadership of indus- 
try, the plutocracy has been obliged to accept certain 
industrial responsibilities, and has thus developed its own 
code of social morahty. 



142 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Under the old r^gimey competitors did not mind any 
conceivable waste of natural resources or human lives. 
The community paid. Jekyll could not afford philanthropy 
in competition with Hyde. With increasing concentration 
of business control, however, it is becoming wiser to miti- 
gate certain evils of unregulated employment, and make 
the additional cost a fixed charge to customers, rather than 
let things go and pay the cost of negligence in taxes. The 
growing popularity of company-paid pensions to employees, 
of welfare work, even of reductions in hours — although these 
have another side — is indicative of a certain rudimentary 
sense of responsibihty on the part of big business. That 
this broader ethical view is largely determined by the desire 
for profits does not detract from its social beneficence. 

More and more, though as yet only partially and grudg- 
ingly, the ruling plutocracy gives up its petty business cor- 
ruption, as a man puts away childish things. It finds that 
it does not pay to rob its own cash drawer. The mere 
progress of big business means the abolition of the worst 
evils of little business. Under a plutocracy, as under a 
democracy, we should gradually end petty adulterations, 
small cheatings, ^Hruck stores,'^ ^'company houses,^' and 
the most flagrant abuses of patent medicine fakirs, ticket 
speculators, and bucket-shop keepers, just as we are gradu- 
ally eliminating the burglar and the bruiser in favor of 
more refined members of an antisocial class. Paramount 
among all considerations is the welfare of big business, of 
the super-financier. Big business is zealous to '^reform'' 
little business out of the running.^ Even the dullest of our 
business princes are beginning to see that to a certain extent 
humanity is the best poHcy, and that honesty pays where 

1 An election appeal to the ten commandments may mean an attack 
upon the little business of vice by the political allies of the big business of 
franchise stealing. • The man who takes thousands may be relegated to an 
innocuous and law-abiding existence by the taker or holder of millions. 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 143 

it is obvious to all. The improved morale of the huge de- 
partment store, with its ostentatious noblesse oblige towards 
customers, indicates the general trend. 

Even apart from an improved business morale due to the 
greater publicity and extension of business, the plutocracy 
has its own program of social reform, which aims to recon- 
cile it to the judgment of the nation. The plutocracy's 
code of reform includes a charity designed to widen the 
eye of the needle. It is a business charity, with organiza- 
tion and prevention of waste; with efficiency and by- 
products. It is a charity which has evolved (following 
industrial changes) from the instinctive, soul-saving giving 
of the Middle Ages, through a competitive, shrieking, 
advertising charity, to a well-organized, far-seeing charity 
on a trust basis. The plutocracy believes in the prevention 
of non-economic causes of poverty in so far as such pre- 
vention does not interfere with business arrangements. It 
believes in special institutions for the blind, halt, insane, 
feeble-minded. It believes in laws against child beating, 
and, with reservations, in laws against child labor. It 
believes in welfare work for employees. It assists many 
forms of ameliorative social work. 

Other ideals of the plutocracy are of larger import. The 
plutocracy believes, as does the democracy, in an increase 
of national productivity. It therefore recognizes the ad- 
vantages of education, especially of a technical education, 
which makes the nation a more effective industrial group. 
It desires more railroads and better railroads, improved 
technical processes, u-rigation of deserts, filling in of swamps. 
It usually desires peace, social security, and general well- 
being. It is opposed to an unprofitable waste of things 
which cost money. It desires a healthy community in 
which all men can work, and it essays the extirpation of 
contagious diseases, which social barriers cannot exclude 
from the homes of the rich. It desires the governmental 



144 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

development of such national resources as cannot be profit- 
ably exploited by individuals, and it encourages unre- 
munerative public activities, translatable into private 
profits. Finally, the plutocracy is imbued with certain 
humanitarian, artistic, and educational ideals, in no direct 
way undermining the influence or lessening the welfare of 
the group. 

This program of the plutocracy, halting though it be, is 
as much superior to the negative social program of the 
earlier individualist as is the organization of the Standard 
Oil Company to that of the little companies which have 
been superseded. If the plutocracy were attacked by indi- 
vidualists alone, its arguments would avail, and its social 
program, like its industrial labors, would justify its existence. 

But the plutocracy is also assailed by men who desire, 
not a return to individualism, but a progress toward demo- 
cratic sociaUzation. These opponents of the plutocracy 
point out its wastes, inefficiencies, and injustices, and accuse 
it of standing in the way of a complete harmonization of 
our industrial organization with our political and social 
aspirations. 

The plutocracy's argument from prosperity is turned 
against itself. Who gets the prosperity? Why, after the 
wastes of production have been so largely eliminated, do we 
still suffer from overwork, child labor, sweating, industrial 
disease, preventable accident, slums, poverty, wretchedness ? 
Why do wages remain low after the plutocracy has estab- 
lished a httle order in industry? Why does an increasing 
inequality accompany an improved utilization of the re- 
sources of the continent ? 

In lessening the wastes of production, the plutocracy 
has increased many of the wastes of consumption. By un- 
proving industrial processes it has drawn attention to 
heightened inequalities, of distribution. Om' senseless in- 
equalities of distribution, from our new point of view, are 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 146 

poor economy and low efficiency, because a gross inequality 
means a lessened pleasure in the consumption of wealth. 
A masterpiece of art in a private gallery, seen by a hundred 
people, gives less pleasure than would the same master- 
piece in a public gallery seen by a million people. A milUon 
dollars of commodities consumed by one overrich man 
gives less pleasure than would the same sum added to the 
expenditure of ten thousand people. If the plutocracy's 
wiser utilization of our national resources leads only to an 
increasing inequahty of wealth and income, the net gain 
to the people may be dubious. 

It is exactly as though the plutocracy, with its brand- 
new tool, the trust, had trebled our production of coal, 
but had distributed the fuel so badly, overstoking some 
boilers and understoking others, that the total production 
of heat was no greater than before. It is as though the 
plutocracy, boasting of its trebled production of coal, and 
exulting in its increased output of smoke and ashes, had 
failed to reahze that a shivering people was demanding, not 
more coal, not more smoke, not more ashes, but more heat. 
What the people want is not wealth, but distributed wealth ; 
not a statistical increase in the national income, but more 
economic satisfactions, more widely distributed. 

Our new economic thought emphasizes as the industrial 
goal of nations, not wealth in the sense of objective values, 
but economic pleasures or satisfactions. The older concep- 
tion measured value in terms of toil or pain involved in 
production, or the sheer scarcity of a desired article. If 
potatoes became twice as hard to get, they became twice 
as valuable. In this sense, our American forests are more 
valuable to-day, are worth more, than they were thirty 
years ago, because we have fewer forests and they are more 
easily monopolized. If to-day we could increase our de- 
posits of coal one hundred fold, the nation (according to the 
earUer economics) would be poorer because it had more to 



146 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

enjoy. Much that we count as wealth is, from the point of 
view of the economic satisfactions of the community, not 
wealth at all, but its exact opposite. 

Our crassly unequal distribution means not only a less 
effective production, but, what is worse, a comparatively 
pleasureless consumption of wealth.^ A bad distribution of 
wealth means a wasting of vast quantities of labor in the 
manufacture of unprofitable articles, and the rendering of 
unnecessary services. A full-grown footman devoting him- 
self to the cultivated wants of a gold-collared puppy as 
clearly illustrates wasted social labor as does a man manu- 
facturing nails by hand after machinery has been intro- 
duced, or as does a man employed in a small, ill-equipped 
workshop at labor which can better be done in a large, well- 
equipped factory. 

The Achilles-heel of the Plutocratic Economy, as of the 
economy which preceded it, is this individualistic and 
objective conception of wealth. It makes the goal of our 
national economy the increase in articles, possessed by cer- 
tain citizens and demanded by others, instead of an increase 
in the economic pleasure derived from a more universal, 
varied, and harmonious consumption. The plutocratic con- 
ception identifies wealth with gain, with the individualistic 
accumulation of scarce things. The plutocracy stands for 
^'business,'' which is concerned uniquely with profits, and 
not, Hke industry, with production. Business means gain- 
ing money, not making things. Business destroys, when it 
pays to destroy, as it upbuilds when it pays to upbuild. 

1 In earlier ages, when population pressed sharply upon the means of 
subsistence, inequalities of wealth were often the truest national economy. 
Wealth more evenly divided would simply have meant more babies. The 
opulent class served the valuable function of depositors and protectors 
of the social surplus. They were the useful fat cells of the social body. 
To-day, however, a nearer approach to an equality of wealth and income 
would undoubtedly mean a vast increase in the sum total of economic 
satisfactions of the more advanced nations. 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 147 

Whether profits are secured through monopoly, adultera- 
tion, advertised poisoning, or the making of good bread and 
good shoes at fair prices, the end of business is the same — 
the maximum of profits. 

For the individual man, in business against competitors, 
this goal of profits (within bounds of law and decency) is 
legitimate. For a nation the conception is self-destructive.^ 

The social program of the plutocracy is tainted by this 
individuahstic conception. That program is too profit- 
cramped, and consequently too pedantically restrained, to 
gain general approbation. The man on the street, though 
astounded at the magnitude of certain benefactions, is 
seldom with any deep sense of gratitude. He vaguely feels 
that the social program even of philanthropists is for the 
most part second-hand. He suspects that it comes from an 
outside intellectual and moral pressure, or even from an 
abiding sense of avertible evils to come. 

These suspicions are perhaps unfounded. Yet the 
social ethics of the plutocracy sit somewhat awkwardly 
upon the victors in the great game of American profit- 
seeking. It is an ethic which, acknowledging no evils, pro- 
ceeds to cure them; which, finding the economic world 
theoretically perfect in all its parts, proceeds to patch it up. 
The plutocrat does not come by his good intentions honestly. 
He is a man who instinctively worships the status quo; who 
instinctively lauds the conditions of which he is the product ; 
who inevitably attributes the failures of others to those 
others' failings. If he becomes a philanthropist, or a social 
and poHtical reformer, it is not so much by virtue of his 
philosophy as because he has a sense of order and dislikes 

1 The plutocracy, like tlie individualists before it, exalts the instinct 
for gain as the one redeeming economic virtue of a humanity, otherwise 
immersed in slothfulness. Protestants against the plutocracy condemn 
this instinct as the original irrepressible economic sin. Actually the in- 
stinct of individual gain (including herein wages) is individually an end, 
but socially, only a means. 



148 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

waste. Moreover, city life and the newspaper bring home 
to us — and, through us, to him — poverty, ilhiess, cruelty, 
and a festering wretchedness; and to all these things a 
growing general comfort and an increasing national wealth 
have made us — and him — most painfully sensitive. The 
cramping of the plutocratic philanthropy, however, consists 
herein, that the huge benefactions of multimillionaires are 
seldom intentionally and consciously directed towards the 
equaUzation of incomes, the prevention of future inequah- 
ties, the democratization of government, or the extension of 
popular control over industries now given over to private 
exploitation. The profits of the plutocracy, even when 
directed to social reform, are seldom intentionally enlisted 
in a war against profits. 
r^ The very qualities of the plutocracy have this inevitable 
I defect, this prenatal taint. Our business magnates, though 
perhaps the greatest industrial organizers in the world, 
are in many respects reactionary. They demand free 
access to the spoils of the continent. They claim the 
privilege (as price of their leadership) of levying a legaUzed 
tribute. By arbitrarily identifying their interests with 
those of the community at large, they subtly exalt their 
own demands above those of other social groups. They 
believe in docile labor. They favor business secrecy, 
financial absolutism, liberty of action to the industrially 
strong. They wish, for the sake of private profits, to rule 
despotically in the business field. 

Because of this inability to rise above the conception of 
individual profits, the plutocracy finds that its own argu- 
ments, used so effectively against the individualist, are now 
directed against its own pretensions. As the old individual- 
ist, so, in its turn, the trust was necessary, and was tolerated. 
The pioneer period could not lead immediately into the 
period of democratic socialization, because neither we nor 
our businesses or governments were adjusted to such a 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 149 

transition. Our industry was too detailed, inchoate, multi- 
form ; our government was too amorphous ; our individual- 
ism too confident and dogmatic. Before a democracy was 
possible, the house must be set in order, the house indus- 
trial, political, and socio-psychological. The cleaner ap- 
pointed for this necessary task of preparing the house for 
the owner^s occupancy was our resplendent, unpremeditated 
plutocracy. 

The task of cleaning, however, is a temporary one, and 
the more efficiently the cleaners work, the sooner they 
may be paid off and dismissed. The rapidity with which 
our trust builders, financiers, business engineers, and long- 
distance organizers are unifying our national businesses 
hastens their own supersession through the creation of con- 
ditions which make a still more efficient regime possible. 
The more rapidly our plutocracy, acting under the stimulus 
of profits, introduces the cooperative element into our busi- 
nesses, the sooner will the democracy be able to adapt this 
cooperative element to the socialization of industry. The 
function of the plutocracy is to reduce chaos to order. But 
order is the very rock upon which democratic socialization 
is built. When the plutocracy shall have finished its task, 
it must take its booty and go.^ 

The new democracy accepts the plutocracy^s theory of 
the survival of the fittest civilization. It recognizes that 
the efficient utilization of our national resources means the 
wealth, bread, life of the people, and that all political 
aspirations must conform to this underlying economic 
factor. The democracy, however, instructed by its wants, 
interprets the word utilization in a new sense. Where the 
plutocracy means the greatest wealth, the democracy means 

* That is, it must go as a group especially favored in an economic sense. 
Under any practicable rSgime of industry there would be an acute demand 
for the well-recompensed services of men with the trainings, abilities, and 
intuitions of our ffreat trust builders. 



150 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the widest range of economic satisfactions. Where the 
plutocracy thinks of profits, the democracy thinks of recrea- 
tion, leisure, a wise expenditure, and a healthful toil. Where 
the plutocracy emphasizes a saving in wages, the democracy 
emphasizes a saving in labor. 

The democracy does not beheve that a nation is rich 
because the majority owes the minority money and labor. 
The democracy does not wish the nation to possess that 
'^wealth'' which is merely the capitalized value of an 
economic rent due from the people to monopolists, but it 
does desire meat, potatoes, school books, public parks, and 
surcease from excessive toil. The democracy interprets 
utilization as such a production, distribution, and consump- 
tion of wealth as will give the highest excess of economic 
pleasure over economic pain to the largest number of people 
for the longest possible time. Upon this end all the indus- 
trial, political, social, and ethical ideals of the democracy 
converge. 

These two conceptions of efficiency conflict in many 
problems. The plutocracy, where it pays in the long run, 
will usually reduce hours of labor, let us say, from twelve 
to ten a day, as distinguished from the early individuafist 
or our present parasitic industries, which have no time to 
consider the long run. The democracy, however, will 
demand a still further reduction of the working day, if such 
reduction is to the net ultimate advantage of the whole com- 
munity^ and whether or not it lessens production and profits.^ 

* At this point a senile argument comes doddering to the rescue. Even 
before it opens its mouth, you hear the question : "If eight hours, why not 
four, two, or one ? If you leave the safe ground of supply and demand 
in regulating the length of the working day, why work over ten minutes 
a day?" The obvious answer is that from the social point of view the 
hours of labor should be so regulated that the final increment of work should 
not mean more loss in fatigue or in abstention from recreation than it 
means in the pleasure from increased wages or output. It is a subjective 
analysis, more difficult to explain than to make, as are many of our every- 
day determinations. 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 151 

Similarly the question of the *^ speeding up*' of labor versus 
the *' restriction of output," the problems of imrestricted 
versus restricted child labor often (though not always) 
involve the choice between an individualistic utihzation in 
terms of profits or even of production and a social utihza- 
tion in terms of life. Many trade union demands are to-day 
misimderstood because we are largely under the dominion 
of ancient ideas identifying the best utilization of our re- 
sources with a maximum of production and profits. 

The conflict between the plutocracy and the democracy 
thus becomes a contest between rival methods, purposes, and 
beneficiaries of the exploitation of the continent. It is not, 
and never has been (and probably no social conflict ever 
was), a mere contest between bad men and good men. To 
our trust builders are sometimes appHed such indecent epithets 
as 'Vampires'' and '' bloodsuckers," while their victims, the 
common people, are represented as meek and humble citi- 
zens, who would rather suffer injury than inflict it. This 
ethical contrast, so solacing to honest poverty, does not, 
however, quite square with the facts. In actual Hfe, affa- 
bility, honesty, courage, and other virtues have a way of 
dividing themselves rather equally between men who favor 
and men who oppose social progress. Rogues are often 
exemplars of all the gentle domestic virtues. Our tran- 
scendent and incomprehensible money-makers, after break- 
ing laws faster and more scientifically than legislators make 
them, decHne into philanthropy and scatter their vertigi- 
nous fortunes to hbraries and hospitals, while an imitating 
horde of lesser magnates — mere inconspicuous milHonaires 
— unostentatiously give time and money to correct the 
minor iniquities of our industrial Hfe. Our plutocrats are 
not wicked meoj 

What is perhaps more significant, they are obsolete. 
The very qualities which fitted our plutocracy for estab- 
lishing eflaciency unfit it for establishing a democracy, 



152 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

which, as far as the people are concerned, is but a higher 
form of efficiency. The democracy is learning that the 
elimination of waste means the elimination as well of the 
present-day trust. Just as the trust builder taught the old 
pioneer that, without a change in industrial organization, 
the conquered wilderness would relapse into a social wilder- 
ness, so our new democrats are teaching that, without a 
readjustment in the distribution and consumption of wealth, 
improvements in production will be of no permanent ad- 
vantage. The mere accumulation of wealth will be but an 
aggravation of poverty. 

All of which the plutocracy does not imderstand. It does 
not in truth comprehend this fascinating industrial world, 
which in a certain sense is its own creation. It cannot con- 
ceive how a society growing in wealth can simultaneously 
grow in discontent, and it regards all subterranean rancor 
as a lack of gratitude. The plutocracy listens astounded 
to men who once spoke of patriotism and national conscious- 
ness, but now speak of socialization and class consciousness, 
and it views with bewilderment the precedence which Labor 
Day parades and speeches seem to be taking over Fourth 
of July parades and speeches. The plutocracy does not 
understand all this ^^sectionaUsm," ^^demagoguery," and 
^'incitement to class hatred." 

The plutocracy would like to issue an injunction, not only 
against the new spirit, but equally against the new and un- 
consecrated uses attached to the plutocracy's English. It 
had always interpreted the phrase ''economic freedom'' 
in the good, old, simple, juridical sense, according to which 
a poor Roumanian, consumptive widow, half-supporting 
her children by sewing, is a "free agent" enjoying "economic 
freedom," as is also the recently landed Italian day laborer, 
party of the first part, who enters into a wage agreement 
(through the padrone) with the party of the second part, 
a trans-continental railroad corporation. The new de- 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 153 

mocracy is putting a new meaning into the old phrase, and 
is insisting on a real, economic (as well as a legal) equality 
between bargainers; upon a real, economic (as well as a 
legal) freedom. All of which is revolutionary, and, what is 
worse, confusing. The plutocracy, which is far from subtle 
when removed from the countinghouse, does not understand. 

When the plutocracy is attacked, as it often is, by the 
uncompromising class-conscious sociahst, it answers his un- 
answerable attacks by equally unanswerable attacks upon 
the socialist. The trust builder, not knowing how to reply, 
not understanding even the terminology of his opponent, 
leaves his own position defenseless and invades and lays 
waste the enemy's country. To the socialist's arguments 
that the plutocratic (and capitalistic) system creates and 
preserves poverty, the trust builder answers nothing. But 
he does prove, or believes that he proves, that the coopera- 
tive commonwealth cannot be created by any forces now 
existing in society, that it could not be maintained without 
the desire for profits, and that, if established, it would dis- 
appoint its creators and would founder on the rock of a 
residual egotism. To the argument that plutocratic rule 
is no longer possible, the trust builder replies that the co- 
operative commonwealth will never be possible. Thus each 
contestant, without meeting the other, gains over him a 
splendid logical victory. 

To the proponent of a new, socialized, and plenary de- 
mocracy, the plutocracy opposes a similar argument. Against 
such a democracy he pleads as a devil's advocate. He 
describes the Demos as an ignorant, self-satisfied, rapa- 
cious, and violent brute ; as a brute which must be caged. 
In his eyes 'Hhe people" is a Thing far lower than its con- 
stituent individuals ; it is a mob, with a mob^s insolence and 
a mob's cowardice. The plutocrat recalls many foibles, 
errors, and crimes of a stumbling, half-seeing democracy. 
He beUeves that the masses are always wrong ; that all prog- 



154 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ress comes from the few. Democracy, he asserts, will let; 
loose the original, ineradicable perversity of the mass. The 
human herd, set free from the leash of subordination, pos- 
sessed with the mad, evil spirit of self-rule, will run violently 
down a steep place into the sea, and will perish in the waters. 

Against such democrats, the plutocracy opposes what it 
claims are the best traditions of Americanism. The plu- 
tocracy honestly regards itself as merely the old American 
individualist, a trifle rejuvenesced, — the individualist trying 
to make an honest living by developing the country. It 
believes that it is the true representative of our sterling 
American qualities of initiative and self-reliance. 

In this interested attachment to old ideals, as in the very 
humbleness of its merely pecuniary ambitions, lies the strength 
of the plutocracy's appeal to public opinion and the menace 
that it may corrode our national morals, or at least tend to 
maintain them on a low level. What is so transcendently 
perilous in our present conditions of industrial success and 
failure is not our inequality of wealth with its evil effect upon 
the consumption of the nation's goods, nor even the subtle 
corruption of our politics — although both are evil — but 
rather the echo of the rich spoiler's ambition in the soul of 
the average men. Our real plutocrats are not all rich. 
Doubtless, in the army of King Charles, the stableboys, 
most ardent despisers of equality, were plus royalistes que U 
RoL To-day in America, just as the standard of democracy 
is borne aloft by some men of fortune, so, on the other hand, 
wealthy plutocrats are backed up by miUions of like-minded 
poor men, penniless plutocrats, dream-millionaires. The men 
of great fortunes give resplendency to the ideals which unite 
rich and poor fortune seekers. 

Secure in the adherence of its humble millions of imitators 
and admirers, the plutocracy looks forward to many genera- 
tions of peaceful control of the labor, votes, and thoughts of 
the American people. It relies upon its enormous wealth, 



PLUTOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 155 

and its strong position in industry, politics, and the machines 
of public expression. It believes that it still possesses a mis- 
sion, and it cannot conceive of the possibility of any alter- 
native social organization. The plutocracy hopes, by a self-^ 
directed curbing of its own worst impulses, to live many 
years in uncontested rule of the American nation. 

But this very program, which is the final appeal of the 
plutocracy for the suffrages of the people, is but the dwarfed 
expression of the new spirit ; is but the shadow, cast before, 
of the coming democracy. When the plutocracy could not 
understand the minds or interpret the motives of the in- 
creasing numbers of earnest men opposed to it, it should 
have begun to suspect that, despite its resplendency, some- 
thing was already radically wrong with it. The plutocracy, 
which denies the possibility of a democratic revolt, is making 
such a revolt inevitable. It is furnishing a common point of 
attack to diverse assailants. In opposition to the plutocracy, 
insurgent Americans are developing vague, large programs, 
in the execution of which the elimination of the plutocracy 
is but a first step. Just as the demand for an American 
nation was born, not of a common positive ideal, but of a 
concerted opposition to petty British aggressions; just as 
"the old nationaHsm" found its highest expression in op- 
position to an ethically dead slavery, — so in a common an- 
tagonism to a towering, menacing plutocracy, men imbued 
with new ideals and new hopes are uniting to estabHsh in 
America a full, free, socialized democracy. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 

THERE are men who believe that the plutocracy is 
undying, Uke one of its favorite 999-years' leases. 
They believe that, as the years pass, the noise and fury of 
the battle against the trusts will die down; the chants of 
victory will be sung ; the returning heroes will be crowned, 
while quietly the unscathed trusts will emerge from the 
conflict. Thereafter a wiser race of business princes will 
rule America through vassals, retainers, and mercenaries, 
while granting bread and circuses to a light-hearted populace. 
Through speciously democratic constitutions these rulers 
will fasten their hold upon a hunger-driven or pleasure- 
lured people. The Declaration of Independence will end 
in government by check book. Democracy will become the 
equality of underlings, dominated by pomp-shunning dic- 
tators. 

A completely triumphant plutocracy would be no new 
thing under the sun. In many ages we have had a rule of 
the wealthy, a gilding of the state and of the laws. Plutoc- 
racies have shown vigor, skill, and martial quality. 

There is reason, however, to believe that the trend in 
America is not towards a perpetuation of plutocratic rule 
nor towards a subversion of democratic sentiment, which 
would be its intellectual accompaniment. We Americans, 
it is true, have surrendered some of our former aggressive 
egalitarianism. We have borrowed some of the class dis- 
tinctions of Europe, and have evolved some upon our own 
account. The "hired girl" is now the servant, sitting at 
the servant's table ; the tradesman enters by the tradesman's 

166 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 157 

door; policemen, firemen, conductors, letter carriers, ^'sub- 
mit" to uniforms;^ and an increasing number of persons 
accept the subordinate status involved in the receipt of 
tips and gratuities. But these facts, while they undoubtedly 
show stratification and the beginnings of caste, do not con- 
stitute an argument that we are forever to be ruled by a 
sovereign wealthy class. The plutocracy is still far from 
the attainment of a separate legal status or from a recognized 
economic sovereignty. As it grows in power, opposing 
forces grow equally. The plutocracy is not always on the 
offensive. Nor is its defense impervious. It has no glamour, 
no traditions, no superabundance of intelligence. It does 
not even possess a monopoly of the community's wealth. 
Its pretensions, to avail, must combat the growing national 
consciousness and the new skeptical knowledge of the 
multitude. 

There is a variant to the foregoing theory of a perpetual 
plutocracy. Some men believe that an eventual democracy 
— as much as is good for us — will come as a free gift from 
omnipotent millionaires, like the charter of a city granted 
by grace of an absolute monarch. The plutocracy will act 
as the faithful steward of our liberties. The golden calf, 
seeing a new light, will descend from his pedestal and mingle 
with the baser herd. This theory is idyllic. Unfortunately, 
however, the full program of the plutocracy, while it may 
carry us far along the line of social reform, will not bring 
us to democracy. Moreover, were we to become the sudden 
peaceful legatees of abdicating industrial despots, we should 
not know what to do with our easy heritage.^ 



1 It is highly significant of the fierce egalitarianism of our grandfathers 
that the wearing of a uniform, even by a railroad conductor, was hotly 
repelled as unworthy of a free-bom American. 

2 We have very few precedents of any real abdication of power by social 
groups or classes. In 1789 the French nobles, and in 1911 the British 
peers, made more or less graceful relinquishment of pretensions, but in 



158 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

What we dimly see to=day is not the promise of a per- 
manent plutocracy, nor democratic institutions graciously 
conceded by repentant money lords, but the native growth 
of a democratic spirit. At the moment when maturing 
forces culminate in the florescence of our powerful plutocracy, 
when the cleavage between Americans at the top and Ameri- 
cans at the bottom appears deepest, when milhons seem 
doomed to an ambitionless, ignoble, precarious existence in 
a preempted land, the new social democracy is born. 

Our hope of this democracy does not depend upon the 
chance of a sudden, causeless turn of the wheel. The motor 
reactions of society, like those of individuals, proceed only 
from prior accumulations of nervous energy. If we are now 
to move towards democracy, it is because we are already 
moving, or preparing to move, in that direction. Our 
conscious social actions are but a fulfillment, a sanction, 
an epilogue; the unconscious social strivings precede and 
prepare. 

That this democratic evolution is already preparing is 
overlooked by him who runs. The development is too multi- 
form and bewildering, and we are too near. If we fix our 
gaze at one point in progress, w^e conclude that results are 
small. If, however, we look over the field and note progress 
in a succession of social efforts, we are amazed at our advance. 
A democratic reform is instituted in one of our States 'wdth 
a blazon of trumpets. Thereafter we hear rumors of its 
working ill or well. Then silence. A dozen years later, 
we are surprised to learn that half the States have adopted 
the new institution, and soon we forget the evil conditions 
which preceded, and think of the reform no longer as an 
improvement, but as a thing upon which we are absurdly 
slow to improve. 

It requires a historical perspective to make any corn- 
each case the action was induced by the expectant attitude of a none too 
patient heir. 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 159 

parison of present and past. '^The heirs of all the ages'' 
are spoilt children, valuing only their very newest toys. An 
infant born a few generations ago might have been elated 
over the steam engine; a child born to-day will find the 
telephone, automobile, and X~ray commonplaces. He will 
no more think of aviation as progress than we regard plow- 
ing and arithmetic as valuable social acquisitions. 

So great is the insistence of the immediate, that we find 
it v/ell-nigh impossible to picture the state of, let us say, the 
workingman of a century ago — of the indentured servant, 
of the slave, of the man who sailed before the mast and was 
beaten, starved, and '^ hazed," of the workman arrested for 
debt, of the child without chance of education. A sunlit 
haze softens the outlines of the past, and inclines us to de- 
scribe present evil conditions in words which in earlier times 
had a harsher significance. We sometimes apply to mod- 
ern labor conditions the word ^'slavery," without realizing 
how inapposite is a comparison of our present conditions 
with the auction block, the forcible separation of families, 
the willful maiming of slaves, the prohibition of education, 
and other features of the Southern labor system of 1860. 

Similarly, because we are so hypnotized by the glitter of 
our plutocracy, we fail to see the countervailing develop- 
ments of the last twenty years in political, industrial, and 
social life. We overlook an evolution which in many States 
and cities has already given a larger popular control over 
government, which in one industry after another has sub- 
jected business to governmental supervision. We do not 
trace the new democratic movement in its innumerable 
ramifications ; in ordinances, laws, judicial decisions, group 
actions, and individual labors. And yet, without knowing 
in detail this vast, multiform movement, we cannot escape 
its impelling spirit. 

That spirit is still inchoate and speaks with many voices. 
To many men it means many things. It inspires the striker, 



160 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

who fights for ''principles " even when the bread-and-butter 
balance is against him. It may also inspire an opposing 
employer, who, with more rudimentary a social sense, dreams 
of good houses, clean bath towels, and other welfare work 
for his employees. It inspires the city reformer fighting for 
"a city for the people"; the political insurgent rebelling 
against laming political traditions; the muckraker pain- 
fully hunting for ''graft"; the inventor, engineer, bacteri- 
ologist, planning to remove physical barriers which impede 
a driven humanity. The new spirit is the language of social 
reformers, who, from being almsgivers and tract distributors, 
are becoming merciless, slow-speaking critics of social abuses. 
It inspires the philanthropic multimillionaire, who founds 
hospitals, libraries, universities, and research laboratories, 
as it inspires the revolutionary, who wishes to end both 
philanthropy and millionaires by reconstituting society on 
a basis of justice. The new message is heard in schools, 
churches, trade-unions, political meetings, social gatherings. 
One hears its echoes in the Pullman coach, the street car, on 
the "bleachers" at the baseball game. 

The new spirit is not all new. Before this we have known 
these types, or, at least, their prototypes. But what has 
been small has grown great, and what has been still has be- 
come loud. There has been a change in emphasis, which 
makes the new spirit a something different from the crass, 
state-blind individualism of yesterday. 

The new spirit is social. Its base is broad. It involves 
common action and a common lot. It emphasizes social 
rather than private ethics, social rather than individual 
responsibility. 

This new spirit, which is marked by a social unrest, a 
new altruism, a changed patriotism, an uncomfortable sense 
of social guilt, was not born of any sudden enthusiasm or 
quickening revelation. It grew slowly in the dark places 
of men's minds out of the new conditions. The old indi- 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 161 

vidualism — carried to its logical sequence — would have 
meant impotence and social bankruptcy. Individualism 
struck its frontier when the pioneer struck his, and society, 
falling back upon itself, found itself. New problems arose, 
requiring for their solution slight amendments of our former 
canons of judgment and modes of action. In many spheres 
of economic life the individual began to find more profit 
in his undivided share of the common lot than in his chance 
of individual gain. On this foundation of an individual in- 
terest in the common lot, the new social spirit was laid. 
This egoistic interest, however, was shared by so many inter- 
dependent millions, that men passed insensibly from an 
ideal of reckless individual gaining to a new ideal, which 
urged the conservation and thrifty utilization of the patri- 
mony of all in the interest of all. 

In obedience to this new spirit we are slowly changing our 
perception and evaluation of the goods of life. We are 
freeing ourselves from the unique standard of pecuniary pre- 
eminence and are substituting new standards of excellence. 
We are ceasing solely to adore successful greed, and are evolv- 
ing a tentative theory of the trusteeship of wealth. We are 
emphasizing the overlordship of the public over property 
and rights formerly held to be private. A new insistence is 
laid upon human life, upon human happiness. What is 
attainable by the majority — life, health, leisure, a share in 
our natural resources, a dignified existence in society — ^is 
contended for by the majority against the opposition of men 
who hold exorbitant claims upon the continent. The inner 
soul of our new democracy is not the unalienable rights, 
negatively and individualistically interpreted, but those same 
rights, *4ife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,'' extended 
and given a social interpretation. 

It is this social interpretation of rights which characterizes 
the democracy coming into being, and makes it different in 
kind from the so-called individualistic democracy of Jeffer- 



162 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

son and Jackson. It is this social concept which is the com- 
mon feature of many widely divergent democratic policies. 
The close of the merely expansive period of America showed 
that an individualistic democracy must end in its own nega- 
tion, the subjection of the individual to an economically 
privileged class of rich men. The political weapons of our 
forefathers might avail against political despotism, but were 
farcically useless against economic aggression. The right 
of habeas corpus, the right to bear arms, the rights of free 
speech and free press could not secure a job to the gray- 
haired citizen, could not protect him against low wages or 
high prices, could not save him from a jail sentence for the 
crime of having no visible means of support. The force of 
our individuaUstic democracy might suffice to supplant one 
economic despot by another, but it could not prevent eco- 
nomic despotism. 

To-day no democracy is possible in America except a 
socialized democracy, which conceives of society as a whole 
and not as a more or less adventitious assemblage of mjnriads 
of individuals, The old individuahstic system pictured the 
individual freely bargaining with the state, not only in a 
mythical social contract, but in the everyday affairs of taxa- 
tion and governmental expenditure. For so much protection 
the individual would pay the state so much taxes. ^^The 
subjects of every State," said the great economist Adam 
Smith, ''ought to contribute to the support of the Govern- 
ment as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective 
abiHties; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they 
respectively enjoy under the protection of the State. The 
expense of government to the individuals of a great nation 
is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of 
a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion 
to their respective interests in the estate." ^ 

1 "Wealth of Nations," Book V, Chap. 2. From an indmdualistio 
point of view, no theory could be juster. Our federal taxation to-day, 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 163 

The individualistic point of view halts social development 
at every point. Why should the childless man pay in taxes 
for the education of other people's children? Why should 
the rich and innocent pay for better almshouses and better 
prisons for the poor and guilty ? Why should those who do 
not use the public parks and public playgrounds pay for 
them in taxes? To the individualist taxation above what 
is absolutely necessary for the individual's welfare is an 
aggression upon his rights and a circumscription of his 
powers. 

All the inspiring texts of democracy fall into nonsense or 
worse when given a strict individualistic interpretation. 
*' Government should rest upon the consent of the governed" 
is a great pohtical truth, if by ''the governed" is meant the 
whole people, or an effective majority of the people; but 
if each individual governed retains the right at all times to 
withhold his consent, government and social union itself 
become impossible. So, too, the phrase ''taxation without 
representation is tyranny," if interpreted strictly in an in- 
dividualistic sense, leads to the theory that government 
should be in the hands of propert}?- owners, that they who 
pay the piper (in taxes) should set the tune, that they who are 
without "a stake in the country" should not participate, or 
at least not equally, in a government designed to raise money 
and to expend it. 

In the socialized democracy towards which we are moving, 
all these conceptions will fall to the ground. It will be sought 
to make taxes conform more or less to the ability of each to 
pay ; but the engine of taxation, like all other social engines, 
will be used to accomplish great social ends, among which 
will be the more equal distribution of wealth and income. 
The state will tax to improve education, health, recreation, 

which falls with especial severity upon people of small and moderate 
means, is immeasurably below the standard set by Adam Smith five gen- 
erations ago. 



164 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

communication, 'Ho provide for the common defense, and 
promote the general welfare,'^ and from these taxes no social 
group will be immune because it fails to benefit in proportion 
to cost. The government of the nation, in the hands of the 
people, will establish its unquestioned sovereignty over the 
industry of the nation, so largely in the hands of individuals. 
The political liberties of the people will be supplemented 
by other provisions which will safeguard their industrial 
liberties. 

To-day the chief restrictions upon liberty are economic, 
not legal, and the chief prerogatives desired are economic, not 
political. It is a curious, but not inexphcable, development, 
moreover, that our constitutional provisions, safeguarding 
our political liberties, are often used to deprive us of economic 
liberties. The constitutional provision that ''no one shall be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law'' has seldom prevented an Alabama Negro from illegally 
being sent to the chain gang, but it has often prevented the 
people of a State from securing relief from great interstate 
corporations. The restraints upon the liberty of the poor 
are to-day economic. A law forbidding a woman to work 
in the textile mills at night is a law increasing rather than 
restricting her liberty, simply because it takes from the em- 
ployer his former right to compel her through sheer economic 
pressure to work at night when she would prefer to work 
by da3^ So a law against adulteration of food products in- 
creases the economic liberty of food purchasers, as a tenement 
house law increases the liberty of tenement dwellers. 
I In two respects, the democracy towards which we are 
striving differs from that of to-day. Firstly, the democracy 
of to-morrow, being a real and not a merely formal democracy, 
does not content itself with the mere right to vote, with 
political immunities, and generalizations about the rights 
of men. Secondly, it is. a plenary, socialized democracy, 
emphasizing social rather than merely individual aims, and 



1 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 165 

carrying over its ideals from the poUtical into the industrial 
and social fields. 

Because of this wideness of its aims, the new spirit, in a 
curiously cautious, conservative way, is profoundly revolu- 
tionary. The mind of the people slowly awakens to the 
realization of the people's needs ; the new social spirit 
gradually undermines the crust of inherited and promul- 
gated ideas ; the rising popular will overflows old barriers 
and converts former institutions to new uses. It is a deep- 
lying, potent, swelhng movement. It is not noiseless, for 
rotten iron cracks with a great sound, and clamor accom- 
panies the decay of profit-yielding privileges. It is not un- 
contested, for men, threatened with the loss of a tithe of their 
pretensions, sometimes fight harder than the wholly disin- 
herited. It does not proceed everywhere at equal pace; 
the movement is not uniform nor uninterrupted. And yet, 
measured by decades, or even by years, the revolution grows. 

This revolution is comparable in extent and content with 
the Protestant Revolution and with the revolts which drove 
James the Second and Louis the Sixteenth from their thrones. 
The social revolution of to-day is greater than those earher 
revolutions, for, reaching further into the consciousness of 
nations, it stirs more men and stirs men more deeply. In 
the Protestant Revolution, the subjects of petty German 
rulers followed their princes in successive bewildering changes 
of faith. In the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, the Paris 
workman fought for the Paris manufacturer, without know- 
ing why. To-day, when education is almost universal, the 
revolution is in the perceived interest of classes still lower 
in the social hierarchy. It appeals to multitudes who sweat. 
It enrolls grimy, overworked democrats, men hitherto be- 
lieved to lie outside the range of social consciousness. 

I use the word ''revolution/' despite its fringe of mis- 
leading suggestion, because no other word so aptly designates 
the completeness of the transformation now in process. A 



1 

166 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

social revolution, in the sense here implied, is a change, 
however gradual, peaceful, and evolutionary, which has for 
its cumulative effect a radical displacement of the center of 
gravity of society. Such a revolution is the substitution 
of a new for an old social equilibrium; a fundamental re- 
arrangement of the relations subsisting between conflicting 
or allied social groups. It is a recrystallization of society 
on new planes. It is a new chemical union of constituent 
social molecules. A relatively more rapid growth of a single 
organ or of a single function of the social organism, a hyper- 
trophy here, an atrophy there, may suffice to bring about 
a fundamental social overturn, such as we designate by the 
word "revolution." 
.r'^This revolution, in the very midst of which we are, while 
•f beUeving that we stand firm on a firm earth, is a revolution 
not of blood and iron, but of votes, judicial decisions, and 
points of view. It does not smell of gunpowder or the bodies 
of slain men. It does not involve anything sudden, violent, 
cataclysmic. Like other revolutions, it is simply a quicker 
turn of the wheel in the direction in which the wheel is already 
turning. It is a revolution at once magnificent and com- 
monplace. It is a revolution brought about by and through 
the common run of men, who abjure heroics, who sleep 
soundly and make merry, who "talk" poHtics and prize- 
fights, who obey alarm clocks, time-tables, and a thousand 
petty but revered social conventions. They do not know 
that they are revolutionists. 

Nor do all these revolutionists comprehend that they are 
allies. One group in the community strives to end the 
exploitation of child labor. Other groups seek to extend 
and improve education, to combat tuberculosis, to reform 
housing conditions, to secure direct primaries, to obtain the 
referendum, to punish force and fraud at the polls, to 
secure governmental inspection of foods, to regulate rail- 
road rates, to limit the issue of stocks and bonds of corpora- 



THE NEW SOCIAL SPIRIT 167 

tions doing an interstate business, to change the character 
and incidence of taxation, to protect and recreate our forests, 
to reserve and conserve our mines, to improve the iot of 
the farmer, to build up trade-unions among workingmen, 
to Americanize incoming immigrants, to humanize prisons 
and penal laws, to protect the community against penury 
caused by old age, accident, sickness, and invaUdity, to 
prevent congestion in cities, to divert to the pubHc a larger 
share of the unearned increment, to accomplish a thousand 
other results for the general welfare. Every day new 
projects are launched for political, industrial, and social 
amelioration, and below the level of the present lie the 
greater projects of the future. Reform is piecemeal and yet 
rapid. It is carried along divergent lines by people holding 
separate interests, and yet it moves towards a common end. 
It combines into a general movement toward a new democracy. 

The world does not change at once, and a progressive 
action excites reactions, as it, in turn, is incited by them. 
There occur simultaneously violent antidemocratic revul- 
sions. Industry seeks to obtain independence of the state ; 
the popular control over government is resisted ; industrial 
forces are allowed to work to the debasement and im- 
poverishment of the citizens. 

These two sets of forces, the democratic and the anti- 
democratic, meet on a million obscure battle grounds 
every hour, minute, and second. The contest is so wide, 
so uninterrupted, so infinitely spUt up into big, little, and 
microscopic encounters, that no one man can oversee the 
field. It is so multiform and so full of apparent excep- 
tions that it is difficult to apply to this movement any 
large, consistent theory. 

Nevertheless no visible social movement can proceed 
without our forming mental concepts, which seek to inter- 
pret it. We cannot play our full r61e in such a social move- 
ment without forming at least a vague conception of it 



168 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

and of our relation to it. ^Vhat our interpretation will be 
depends upon our education, occupation, race, religion, 
traditions; upon the part of the movement that we see ; 
upon the manner in which it affects our income and pre- 
dilections, and the income and predilections of our rela- 
tives, neighbors, and friends. Our interpretation is a com- 
bination-personal-group-class interpretation, for when John 
Doe conceives of the universe his conception always con- 
tains more of John Doe than of the universe. And group 
interpretations are but blurred, composite photographs of all 
these individual interpretations. 

The interpretations of our present democratic struggle 
and adjustment, although many, may be reduced in sub- 
stance to two, answering roughly to two differing tem- 
peraments and to two differing positions in the social 
structure. These interpretations may be called the theory 
of the social rebound and the theory of social expan- 
sion. Or, expressed somewhat differently, these interpre- 
tations may be called the theory of progress through poverty 
and the theory of progress through prosperity. 

Of these theories the first is the older and the more 
instinctive. All through history we encounter the prophecy 
that worse evil must precede the good. The cup of bitter- 
ness must first be filled. The avenger must be hardened 
in his resentment. When the victim and the avenger are 
one, the theory is that of the crushed worm. The theory 
of the social rebound presupposes conflict ; and conflict 
presupposes classes, with sharply defined and mutually 
antagonistic interests, since if opponents do not recognize 
themselves as opponents there can be no war. The theory 
of the social rebound thus finds its clearest expression in the 
doctrine according to which social classes are engaged in a 
bitter and inescapable class war, in which compromise and 
conciliation play the smallest possible r61e, and in which scant 
regard is paid by either class to traditions of social peace. 



CHAPTER XII 

DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 

THE theory that no real democracy can be attained 
except through a class war between capitalists and 
wage earners has been held in some form by almost all, if not 
all, socialist parties. 

According to this theory, the class war is not a voluntary 
struggle, provoked by ambitious leaders, but is an inevitable 
result of ''the economic development of industrial society." 
That development, it is claimed, depresses the city work- 
men, the small tradesmen, and the little agriculturalists 
(peasant proprietors) by producing ''an increasing uncer- 
tainty of existence, increasing misery, oppression, servitude, 
degradation, and exploitation. Ever greater grows the 
mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unem- 
ployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and 
oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie 
and proletariat which divides modern society into two 
hostile camps, and is the common characteristic of every 
industrial country." ^ 

This theory of a class war, which is appHed to America, 
as to other "lands governed by capitalistic methods of pro 
duction, " conceives the state as a class-state, as an organ 
and a weapon of one economic class, and it conceives of 
society as merely a battle ground for classes, with interests 
antagonistic and irreconcilable. It underestimates those 
common interests of classes, those broad, unifying bonds in 
society which inspire certain national ideals and race pur- 

i See the Erfurt (1891) Program of the German Social Demooratio 
party. 

169 



170 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

poses. It postulates the ultimate reduction of all class 
antagonisms to one sharp, inevitable antagonism between 
the owners of the means of production and the wage earners. 

In its earliest form, in the Communist Manifesto of 
1848, the theory of the class struggle involved something 
of the idea of a servile revolution, with the impulsive ferocity 
of such an uprising. The revolutionary class was to be hard- 
ened to action by a progressive debasement. ^'The forcible 
overthrow of all existing social conditions" was to be at- 
tained by the united workingmen of all countries who had 
' ' nothing to lose hut their chains , ' ' and ' ' a world to gain . " ' ' Let 
the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution." 

Not only the reactionary ruling classes of 1848, but all 
friends of civilization, might well have trembled at the 
prospect of such a '' Communistic revolution." ''There is 
a very great danger at hand," wrote Rodbertus in 1850, 
''lest a new barbarism, this time arising from the midst of 
society itself, lay waste the abodes of civilization and of 
wealth" ; and the poet Heine thought with horror of ''those 
dark iconoclasts," "who with horny hands would break the 
marble statues of beauty." In 1848 the workers of west- 
ern Europe had not recovered from the shock of a Titanic 
economic disruption, which in the course of half a century 
had lowered real wages, had dislocated the old industrial 
system, had robbed the workman of the protection of old 
laws and ancient customs (without granting him new pro- 
tection), and had thrown him defenseless into a new arena, 
in which there was no rule but free competition and no 
pity or remission of fate to the vanquished. Masses of the 
German workers, whom the Communist Manifesto seemed 
especially to hold in mind, were impoverished, overworked, 
often actually starving. They did not enjoy the primary 
rights of free speech, free press, free movement, or com- 
bination. They had no protectors in the futile German 
courts, nor in the churches, Lutheran and Catholic. They 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 171 

had no allies in the political parties. Beaten down by the 
machine and the competition of the English factory, the 
German workman was abject. So also, though to a less 
extent, were the English workers, who had borne the first 
brunt of machine production; and so, generally, were the 
working classes of all European countries. Men treated 
savagely respond savagely. Men denied the beauty of the 
world have small respect for the beauty of the world. 

It was no accident that the doctrine of an inexorable 
class war, motived by an increasing impoverishment of the 
working classes, was born of the repression and intellectual 
ferment of 'Hhe hungry forties.'' There seemed at that 
time no other way out. Stated then most clearly and 
absolutely by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, men of 
Titanic intellectual stature, the theory imposed itself, by 
means of successive modifications, upon the minds of 
millions of men. Long after 1848, when the workmen were 
slowly achieving political and industrial democracy, socialists 
continued to write under the impress of those early bar- 
barous conditions. 

This socialism, which I shall call '^absolute socialism," 
to distinguish it from the Utopian socialism which preceded 
it, and from the conditional socialism into which it seems 
now to be passing, was a dogmatic, uncompromising, and 
revolutionary philosophy. It was a system of absolutes, of 
right and wrong, of things necessary and unescapable; 
not of relatives, of more or less. It was the philosophy of 
wage earners who accepted what their employers gave 
them, and not of bargainers, traders, savers, owners. It 
did not strive, like trade-unionism, gradually to whittle 
away the employer's power, gradually to weaken his po- 
sition, while recognizing it in trade agreements. Absolute 
socialism claimed for the workingman the full product of 
labor. Anything less, however little less, was exploitation. 

Exploitation, however, could not be little. The share of 



172 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

capital tended to absorb the whole product of labor above 
a despicable subsistence wage. It was not the employer's 
fault. However much he might be ridiculed and hated, 
the greatest capitalist of them all was recognized to be as 
much in the grip of the inevitable economic development 
as was the least of his employees. Because of this very 
inevitableness there could be no parleying between labor 
and capital; no joining of hands; no giving or asking of 
quarter; no softening of the conflict; and (in the early 
logical days of the doctrine) no preliminary betterment of 
the workman's lot. For the sake of his profits the manu- 
facturer must allow his workmen to survive. For the over- 
turn of capitalism nothing but this survival was necessary. 

The framework of this absolute socialism was the factory. 
The new doctrine visualized the sharp conflict of interest 
within the factory between manufacturer and workman. 
It was impersonal, necessary. It was a philosophy of tool 
users, who understood and obeyed physical impersonal 
forces. It taught that social evolution was as natural and 
inevitable as the expansion of steam; as irresistible as the 
passage of hardened steel through a yielding metal. 

Since private ownership of the means of production led 
automatically to ^ increasing misery, oppression, servitude, 
degradation, and exploitation," it followed, even without 
other assumptions, that private property must be expro- 
priated and converted into public property. Such a philos- 
ophy of wholesale expropriation would, it was foreseen, 
antagonize all property owners, including tradesmen and 
farmers or peasants. But, it was assumed, the automatic 
progress of industry would expropriate these '^rapidly sink- 
ing middle classes," who would then instinctively join 
hands with other proletarians. Finally the proletariat ^ 

1 Engels defines the proletariat as "the class of modern wage laboren 
who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling 
their labor-power in order to live." 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 173 

would come to represent practically all society, and would 
be aligned against a "Comparatively small number of capital- 
ists and great landowners." When that time came, the 
capitalistic system with all its exploitations and disharmonies 
would cease, and a new era would be born, in which eco- 
nomic, political, and social organization would be based on 
the common ownership of the means of production, and 
economic justice and human dignity would be attained. 

The unifying value of such a philosophy and its strong 
emotional appeal to factory populations in the grip of evil 
conditions enormously aided conviction, and the doctrine 
soon became a cult and almost a religion. For, buttressed 
though it was by reasonings from science, absolute socialism 
remained in its appeal essentially religious. It taught the 
vicarious atonement of all our economic sins by one class 
which bears the cross. It foretold the advent of universal 
peace, and the end of poverty, hunger, vice, crime, and 
bitterness. It proclaimed a heaven on earth as opposed 
to a pi-esent hell. It presented to believers a choice as 
absolute as that between good and evil, thus saving them 
the intolerable travail of an appraisal of reforms and half 
measures. It shielded the future heaven from the gaze of 
the more skeptical devotees, assuring them that the in- 
evitable social revolution would shape society in ways un- 
dreamed of — but with a visage benevolent. It was not a 
quietistic religion; it did not teach submission, but faith 
and works, solidarity and revolt. It was a rehgion, inspir- 
ing and solacing, a religion which enlisted the affections of 
millions, and was contended for fanatically and Uterally, 
and not without a measure of theological odium. 

To-day men who were formerly convinced are escaping 
from the obsession of this imposing theory of absolute 
socialism. They are beginning to see that the predictions 
of Marx, based upon the conditions of an earlier and cruder 
era of machine production, run counter to the mass of 



174 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

evidence accumulated during the last fifty years. Lesser 
men possessed of later knowledge are learning to interpret 
otherwise the vast democratic reorganization of society 
which Marx foresaw. 

In the first place, as Marx later saw, no progressive im- 
poverishment of the working classes, no ^ increasing misery, 
oppression, servitude, degradation, and exploitation" has 
taken place. The workers have become, not poorer, but 
richer. While wages have not increased at a rate com- 
mensurate with the growth in social wealth ; while the 
progress of workingmen has been everywhere slower than 
the ideals of our civilization imperatively demand and the 
resources of our civilization render possible; while the 
status of the unskilled laborer remains exceedingly low, still 
it is evident that in America, Germany, France, England, and 
elsewhere, progress has been continuous. Wages during the 
last half century have risen faster than prices,^ hours of 

* It is absolutely impossible within the compass of a note, or indeed of 
a whole book, to give even an outline of the vast body of evidence pointing to 
the rise in wages in the industrial nations of the world during the last sixty 
or seventy years. One can here refer to only a few of the various com- 
pilations made in the different countries. For a succinct statement of the 
rise of wages in Germany from 1871 to 1907, see the masses of statistics col- 
lated by Dr. R. R. Kuczynski, " Die Entwickelung der gewerblichen Lohne 
seit der Begriindung des Deutschen Reiches," Berlin (Georg Reimer), 1909. 
For England, see Bowley (Arthur L.), "Wages in the United Kingdom in 
the Nineteenth Century," Cambridge (University Press), 1900. For 
France, see Levasseur (Emile), " La Population Fran^aise," as also a later 
pamphlet, " Le Salariat " (1903). See also the report of the French Office 
du Travail showing the rise of wages in France from 1806 to 1900. For 
summaries of the course of wages in various occupations in Denmark, Nor- 
way, Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, etc., within recent decades, 
see the various tables in the Board of Trade (Labour Department), Fourth 
Abstract of Foreign Labour Statistics, London, 1911, pages 21-132 in- 
clusive. 

Any summary of figures so broad can have but a vague meaning, but 
it would appear that from 1840 to 1911, money wages have more than 
doubled in France and in England, and that the rate of increase during the 
last forty years has been more rapid in Germany than in England or France 
in the same period. These wages, it is true, are merely money or nominal 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 175 

labor have been reduced, and factory conditions have been 
improved. Laws have set limits to the labor of women and 
children, have protected life, limb, and health of workers, 
and have provided for a recovery of damages in case of 
injury or death. In many countries (although not in 
America) the status of the workingman is improved by com- 
pulsory state insurance against old age, sickness, accident, 
and invaUdity, and, in isolated places, even against unem- 
ployment. Trade-unions, growing to enormous national 
aggregations, greatly improve labor conditions. Through 
the spread of general educational facilities, through housing 
reform, health reform, and a progressive social policy, the 
status of workmen is further raised. In one country after 
another the workingman is enfranchised, and is protected 
from intimidation and fraud at the polls. The right to 
combine in trade-unions and to strike is generally acknowl- 
edged. Large sections of the working class are successively 
raised above the level of the unskilled, and fresh demands 
are constantly made by new industries for new grades of 
skill. While there are counteracting tendencies, while the 
increasing intensity and monotony of labor and the divorce 
of the worker from the plot of ground which he once owned 
work to his disadvantage, his continuous progress is indis- 

wages, but after deduction has been made for the net increase in prices 
(including the enormous increase in city rents), there is apparently left a 
fairly wide margin of net gain. According to an estimate of Gide (Charles), 
*' Cours d'Economie Politique " (Paris, 1911, p. 665), there has occurred in 
France, during the nineteenth century, an increase in the cost of living of 
not over one third, while money wages have more than doubled. This 
estimate does not take into account the relative amounts of unemploy- 
ment at the beginning and at the end of the period, nor the rapid rise in 
prices during the years since 1900. 

The masses of statistics, while they do not allow conclusions to be drawn 
as to the exact amount of the increase in real wages, do not permit doubt 
as to the reality of such a rise. For an " attempted explanation of the in- 
crease in wages during the last half of the nineteenth century," see 
Schmoller (Gustav), " Die historische Lohnbewegung von 1300-1900 und 
ihre Ursachen." 



176 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

putable. The motive power of the workman's dissatisfaction 
and revolt is the enormous distance between his actual 
status and his increasing demands, rather than any hypo- 
thetical impoverishment. 

Not only is the wage earner not becoming impoverished, 
but there is no likelihood, in America at least, of an absorp- 
tion by this class of all other classes, and a reduction of all 
conflicts to one great class war. Although our factory 
population, recruited largely through immigration, is in- 
creasing at a stupendous rate, the other classes in the com- 
munity maintain themselves. In America, as in Germany, 
France, and elsewhere, the non-wage-earning class is actually 
growing. Despite department stores and ''chains of stores, '' 
the number of shopkeepers seems to increase ; and even 
where these small tradesmen are more dependent than 
formerly upon the favor of an industrial overlord, they can- 
not be identified in interest with the wage-earning prole- 
tariat, and cannot be gathered upon a platform which calls 
for the social appropriation of the means of production.^ 

The independent farmer is not disappearing. He is not 
becoming a proletarian. The bonanza farms, far from 
kilHng off the little farms (as had been predicted), are them- 
selves succumbing; and the tendency, in America as in 
most countries, is away from any concentration of farm 
ownership. In 1900 there were four times as many Ameri- 
can farms as in 1850. The average size of the farm was 
smaller in 1900 than in 1850 or 1870. The great estates of 
1000 acres and more, while aggregating (in 1900) over 
200,000,000 acres, are for the most part largely uncultivated 
areas or else cheap and arid tracts in the West, of which 
the cultivable portions are doomed to be speedily parceled 
out among an increasing number of farmers. Notwith- 

^ According to the census of 1900, the number of retail merchants and 
dealers in the United States increased in ten years from 660,239 to 790,886, 
a rate of increase slightly less than that of the population. 



i 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 177 

standing an increase in farm tenancy, both relative and 
absolute, the actual number of farmers owning and operat- 
ing their own farms is greater than ever before; while, 
parenthetically, the tenants are for the most part not an 
entirely unpropertied class. The number of farm laborers 
(other than members of the farmer's family) remains small, 
aggregating only two such laborers to every five farms; 
while the chances of these laborers eventually to become 
farmers, although probably decreasing, are still good. A 
concentration of the land into a few hands is not micro- 
scopically probable. A proletarization of our property- 
owning farming class is impossible. 

Nor are other small property owners being reduced to the 
position of proletarians. Like the wage earners, so also our 
small property owners are advancing in prosperity and are 
accumulating more property. That a violent concentration 
of wealth is taking place at the top is confoundingly patent, 
but it is almost equally evident, and is even more significant, 
that a wide diffusion of wealth is occurring simultaneously. 
Tens of millions of Americans own farms, houses, shops, 
businesses; or have bank accounts, life insurance interests, 
mortgages, bonds, stocks, or other property or evidences of 
property, individual or joint. In countries where there are 
income tax figures, a progressive diffusion of wealth can be 
statistically shown. In America the tendency is evident, 
although not equally capable of statistical demonstration.^ 

The Marxist theory of a successful revolution based upon 
the creation of two hostile classes, standing nakedly opposed 
in society, one, the superfluously wealthy possessors of the 
means of production, the other, a swelling mass of miserable, 

1 For European evidence, see Leroy-Beaulieu (Paul), **Le Colleetivisme,'* 
Paris (F61ix Alcan) , 1909. See also the Socialist, Bernstein (Edward) , *' Evo- 
lutionary Socialism," New York (B. W. Huebsch) , 1909. For the diffusion 
of French wealth, see Neymarek (Alfred), "French Savings and their In- 
fluence upon the Bank of France and upon French Banks." Senate Docu- 
ment, 61st Congress, 2d session, Document No. 494. 



178 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

absolutely destitute proletarians, thus appears economically 
untenable. The proletariat advances; wealth becomes 
diffused; the small property holders increase in numbers. 
The theory is perhaps even more untenable on other grounds. 
For were a struggle between two such classes possible, its 
outcome might be very different from what Marx pre- 
dicted. 

In America there are men, who not only foresee, but 
actually see such a sharp and naked alignment of the two 
classes. For them there are but two groups — the veiy 
rich and the desperately poor. So completely is their canvas 
filled by sprawling, fatuous scions of multimilUonaires on 
the one hand and overworked, unskilled laborers on the 
other, that they no longer see the average man, who keeps 
no servant and has but a one week's vacation, but who, 
judged by the standards of other nations and othei times, 
is well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-conditioned, with 
some leisure and recreation. They note only the melo- 
dramatic contrasts between excessive wealth and abysmal 
poverty, and they generalize and despaii-. For the extreme 
contrasts are glaring, and the rich seem so strong, so en- 
trenched, so splendidly and brutally successful, while the 
very poor seem to lack all elements of defense or aggression, 
— without money, without education, without political tra- 
ditions, without cohesion, or the common tongue upon 
which to build it. 

A few years ago, Mr. Upton Sinclair, in a starthng book 
called ^'The Jungle,^' described the horrible conditions of 
the Chicago stockyards. A Lithuanian laborer, named 
Jurgis, is exploited at every turn; his wife dies, his family 
is broken up ; he himself is sent to jail. He passes from 
despair to vindictive hatred, only to be rescued by his con- 
version to sociaHsm. 

The book is not false in essentials, whatever its exag- 
gerations in detail. We read accounts of almost equally 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 179 

brutal conditions in Pittsburg, Bethlehem, and in the 
sweatshops of a dozen American cities. We need not go 
beyond cautious and authoritative government reports to 
believe that organized anonymous cruelties are perpetrated 
for profit on hundreds of thousands of workmen and work- 
women in the United States. It is murder veiled and im- 
personal, but it is still murder. 

It is an error, however, in fixing our attention upon this 
menacing problem of the destruction of our very poor, 
mentally to carry over conditions such as existed in the 
Chicago stockyards to our whole industrial problem. 
America is not divided into Beef Trust magnates and 
Lithuanian helots. Jurgis, poor, ignorant, dumb, and be- 
wildered, is no more typical than Armour, though both 
exist, and both are problems. 

From tjie men at the very bottom (so long as they remain 
there) less perhaps is to be hoped than feared. Such men 
are not the standard bearers of revolt, nor the steady carriers 
of the torch of progress. They are the stuff of which bloody, 
unsuccessful uprisings might be made, but they are too 
poor, too ignorant, and, by their very economic dependences, 
too inconstant and fearsome, to lead or even effectively 
to participate in the tenacious, long-continued campaigns 
which must precede any revolutionary change in the bases 
of modern society. You can vote illiterate men more 
easily than Uterate. You can appeal with a '^fuU dinner 
pail" to men on the verge of starvation. You can convert 
a mass of underfed, and, therefore, irresolute and credulous, 
men into engines of tyranny and reaction. The nobler men 
on the hunger line are full of generous aspirations, but they 
have not preeminent intellectual power nor the capacity for 
objective thinking and sustained action. These starved 
souls evolve religious, not political policies; they develop 
kingdoms in heaven, not materiaHzed cooperative common- 
wealths. 



180 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

That the most indigent among Americans are not the 
leaders of democracy may be seen from a consideration of 
the status of the Negro. Our ten milUon Negroes, con- 
sidered as a whole, are the most exploited section of the 
conmiunity. To the burden of racial prejudice have been 
added severe industrial handicaps and a general disfranchise- 
ment. The race is too poor, weak, ignorant, and disunited 
to make effective protest. For the most part it constitutes 
— through fault of circumstance — an inert mass, which 
could perhaps be more readily used, both industrially and 
poHtically, for the prevention of democracy than for its 
attainment. While the Negro is rapidly progressing, while 
the future may well bring forth a prosperous, intelligent, 
united, and poHtically intrenched colored population, the 
r61e of the Negro in our progress towards democracy will 
for the time being remain wholly subordinate. 

The same is true, to a less extent, of the most exploited 
of our recent immigrants. The newly arrived Italian day 
laborer is not so discontented, nor so effective a fighter for 
democracy, as is the richer immigrant who has been here a 
dozen years, or as is the son of the immigrant. Where the 
newcomer possesses a keen intelligence and an aggressive 
discontent, these qualities may make up for a low industrial 
status. Generally speaking, however, intense poverty, bear- 
ing the sordid fruits, pauperism, crime, vice, sickness, and 
premature death, does not make for democratic reform. A 
really effective discontent accompanies a larger income, a 
greater leisure, a fuller education, and a vision of better 
things. 

The hope of society lies, not in the oppression of men to 
the verge of revolt, but in the continuous eUmination of 
oppression. The hunger of the multitude is not the true 
motive of revolution. Hunger degenerates ; insecurity of 
life leads to crime; and these, by enfeebling their victims, 
strengthen the oppressive bonds and make them perpet- 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 181 

ual. A man or a class, crushed to earth — is crushed to 
earth. ^ ' 

What then remains of the early vigor of the theory of a 
successful class war between a swarming proletariat and a 
small machine-owning class? If the men who have ''nothing 
to lose but their chains^' are actually the weakest, most 
ignorant, and most disunited members of society; if those 
who have nothing are only a minority, gradually dwindling 
(and are opposed to an increasing majority who are indeed 
poor, but are growing steadily wealthier), — what hope is 
there that the smaller, weaker, decUning class will overcome 
the opposition of the larger, stronger, growing class? If, 
on the other hand, the proletariat does not consist solely of 
the propertyless nor even of wage earners ; if rising wages, 
savings, and the actual ownership of the means of produc- 
tion do not take a man out of the proletariat, where is the 
ahgnment of the class war ? 

These considerations have not been without their effect 
upon the defenders of the class war theory. In the writings 
of many socialists the conception of a class war has been 
so watered as completely to alter its original significance. 
In many countries there have been observable the begin- 
nings of a change from an older, more abstract, absolute, 
and dogmatic socialism to a newer, more concrete, con- 
ditional, and conciliatory socialism. The tendency is 
especially apparent in countries which are democratically 
representative, and in which, therefore, a conciliatory poHcy 
is hkely to secure a larger vote and a greater measure of 

1 Neither Marx nor Engels believed in the revolutionary qualities of 
paupers and criminals. "The * dangerous class, ' the social scum, that pas- 
sively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, 
here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution ; 
its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed 
tool of reactionary intrigue." ** Communist Manifesto." Authorized 
English Translation. Edited and aimotated by Frederick Engels, Chicago 
(Kerr & Co.), p. 29. 



182 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

immediate influence. It is less apparent in countries where 
political democracy is not so assured and where an uncom- 
promising party must fight for preUminary poUtical rights. 

In Germany, where a reactionary feudal class still holds 
power, the Socialist party is the most effective democratic 
party, and many men who do not believe in the class strug- 
gle vote the Socialist ticket to express their preferences for 
immediate reforms or their protest against concrete evils. 
In more democratic countries, on the other hand, such as 
France, England, the United States, and Switzerland, the 
Socialist party is obHged to compete for the suffrages of the 
people with other democratic parties, with the result that 
not only is the vote smaller, but the movement tends gradu- 
ally to lose something of its old class war characteristics. 
''Some of our Socialist comrades," recently said Jaures, 
''interpret the class war in a sense much too simple, one- 
sided, and abstract." According to Sarraute, the class war 
is not "an absolute abstract principle" absorbing ''the 
whole life of society." "As soon as the State is democra- 
tized, and equal rights are admitted for all, whether capital- 
ists or proletarians, ... it becomes contradictory and mean- 
ingless to talk of a class State." 

The rise everywhere among Socialists of "possibilists," 
"opportunists," "revisionists," and "Fabians" emphasizes 
the attempt to adjust the old absolute theories not only to 
varying conditions in different countries, but also to those 
broad democratic impulses which are now sweeping through 
other classes besides the proletariat. The tendency is to 
change party policy from a merely critical and sweepingly 
destructive, to a constructive, and therefore more conciUa- 
tory, attitude, to moderate the demands, to broaden the 
appeal. The attempt to found a majority upon "the pro- 
letariat," upon the propertyless wage and salary workers, 
is being given up, and the appeal is now being made, not so 
much to "wage earners," as to "workers," "producers," 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 183 

and to the masses generally. In the effort to secure the 
adherence of farmers, even property owners are being ad» 
dressed, a distinction being drawn between the means of 
production which exploit labor, and those means of produc- 
tion (the small farm) which are already in the hands of the 
producer, and are therefore, inferentially, not exploitative.^ 
These non-exploiting means of production, moreover, seem 
Ukely long to remain innocuous. ''One thing seems certain," 
says the American socialist, John Spargo, ''namely, that 
farm ownership (in the United States) is not on the decline. 
It is not being supplanted by tenantry ; the small farms are 
not being absorbed by large ones. . . . The small farmer 
will continue to be an important factor — indeed, the most 
important factor — in American agriculture for a long time 
to come, perhaps permanently. If the socialist movement 
is to succeed in America, it must recognize this fact in its 
propaganda." ^ In other words the Socialist party, to be- 
come effective, must secure the adherence, or allay the op- 
position, of this powerful property-owning class. 

It can do this in one way only — through a surrender 
of doctrines. Tenets which ahenate classes whose support 
is essential must of necessity be abandoned. Such doctrines 
may be bravely recanted or eloquently ignored, or by pro- 
cess of interpretation may be magically transformed into 
their opposites. But their change is inevitable, when the 
classes to which they were to appeal have changed. 

The sociaUst behevers in a class war between proletariat 

^ Such a distinction could be more easily made in practice than justi- 
fied in theory. If it is not exploitation for a farmer to till his own farm, 
does it become exploitation when he hires his son, or his nephew, or, at 
harvest times, a single outside helper ? An attempt to apply this distinc- 
tion would result in a rough discrimination against large estates, which 
thereupon would be parceled out into small holdings. Such an agricul- 
tural decentraliaation, however, would be very far from th« old socialifltic 
ideal. 

* Spargo, John, "Socialism, a Summary and Interpretation of Socialist 
Principles." New York (Macmillan), 1909, p. 134. 



184 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

and bourgeoisie are in an uncomfortable dilemma. If the 
proletariat does not become the overwhelming majority of 
the nation, but remains a minority, it cannot hope to gain 
its ends unaided. If, on the other hand, the city proletariat 
seeks the permanent adherence of small farmers, of farm 
laborers (with the hope of becoming farmers), of small 
tradesmen with some little equity in their business, of 
other men with a little property, it must so mitigate the origi- 
nal rigor of its demands as to insure these potential aUies 
against expropriation. The owner of a five-thousand-dollar 
farm, covered by a two-thousand-dollar mortgage, has still a 
precious equity of three thousand dollars in his land. Such 
a farmer may be vitally interested in the control of railroad 
rates, elevator charges, and trust prices, but he does not 
approve of any social reorganization, however ultimately 
beneficent, which will take from him his three thousand dol- 
lars, or his farm and his immediate livehhood, with or with- 
out compensation. 

If, however, the private ownership of small and medium- 
sized farms, and of houses, live stock, and machinery on 
farms, be conceded, other demands for concessions will be 
inevitable. The small shopkeeper, with no aptitude for 
factory labor and with a consciousness of fulfiUing a humble 
social service, will demand the retention of his business, 
which has a greater value to him than the money which it 
represents. Gradually the socialists will recognize that 
the hope of a radical industrial reorganization depends upon 
the assent of so large a section of the men with small prop- 
erty as to compel a readjustment of their social program. 

Such a readjustment involves a complete surrender of the 
old idea of expropriation, which appeals only to the already 
completely expropriated. The Marxian theory of surplus 
value had given this demand for expropriation an ethical 
justification. But that theory has proved untenable. We 
can no longer argue deductively that private ownership 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 185 

automatically, inevitably, and always leads to exploitation. 
To prove that our present distribution of income is immoral, 
we must base the immorality inductively on the social con- 
sequences of such distribution. The whole problem of 
distribution ceases to be one of absolute right and becomes 
one of relative utility. 

Moreover, just as the extent of the proposed expropriation 
must be Hmited by exceptions in favor of the httle farm 
and other small properties, so the quality of expropriation is 
bound so to be changed as to make the very term '^ expro- 
priation" inapposite. When social utility rather than ab- 
stract right becomes the guiding force of sociahsm, the prob- 
lem will arise, whether a given property should be taken 
over or merely regulated and its profits limited; whether 
in another industry increased taxation, or perhaps the re- 
tention by the state of the future unearned increment, may 
not be more socially advantageous than collective ownership 
and operation. In short, the problem will become one of 
ways and means. The line of attack will become the line 
of least resistance and of greatest results. Society will 
seek to modify and socially utilize, rather than incontinently 
to destroy, our machinery of industrial organization (trusts, 
corporations, exchange, wage system, etc.). Progress will 
become adjustment by the gradual adaptation of production 
to social uses, rather than a complete overturn, either violent 
or peaceful, either rapid or slow, of our industrial habits and 
implements. This process will tend to become an attrition, 
a wasting away, a successive attenuation of '^vested rights," 
rather than a naked expropriation. Finally this abrasion 
of rights will be compelled by an overwhelming flood of 
votes and an irresistible pressure of an enlightening pubhc 
opinion, rather than by a class war, as the class war was 
formerly interpreted. 

It is not assumed that this complete volte-face of the Social- 
ist parties has already taken place. Even in countries with 



186 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

universal suffrage, popular institutions, improving labor 
conditions, and large classes of small property holders, the 
change in policy has only begun ; and even the beginnings 
are resisted. Party leaders are usually narrow, formal, and 
conservative, seeking to emphasize distinctions, placing 
party organization and party claims above the general wel- 
fare. But parties, whether in power, opposition, or piotest, 
tend to reflect the voter's perception of industrial changes; 
for a party without votes, however high its ideals, is not a 
party. The gradual domestication of the Socialist parties, 
if one may use that word, is thus compelled by the view, not 
of the leaders, but of the outside masses of potentially 
Socialist voters.^ 

1 The National (1908) Program of the Socialist party reveals the extent 
to which the class war doctrine has been surrendered. The class war was 
originally an inevitable, universal, unique, and absolutely unconditional 
war between proletariat and bourgeoisie, between wage earners and cap- 
italists, who, by the very fact of their being capitalists, were exploiters of 
labor. That war now becomes a softened conflict between ''the workers 
of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all classes" on the one 
side, and "a few capitalists, . . . permitted to control all the country's 
industrial resources, " on the other. The party no longer appeals solely 
to men who sell their labor, but also to those who sell the products of their 
labor. It no longer appeals exclusively to the wageworkers or proletarians, 
but to the far vaguer and more inclusive groups of "workers" and "pro- 
ducers." A half appeal is made to "the small farmer, who is to-day ex- 
ploited by large capitaV ; to the "small manufacturer and trader, who is 
engaged in a desperate and losing struggle" against ''concentrated capitaV ; 
and to "even the capitalist himself (note here the meaning of "capitalist"), 
who is the slave of his wealth rather than its master." The goal of the 
party is the social ownership, not of the land and the means of production, 
but "of the land and the means of production used for exploitation.'' "The 
Socialist party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose 
of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, con- 
trol, or management of land to lohatever extent may he necessary to attain that 
end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those 
using it in a useful and hona-fide manner without exploitation.'* In thew 
and other directions, logio and the traditions of socialism are sacrificed to 
new party Ideals, and the class war theory, no longer necessary, is denied 
In the very process of affirmation. 

If it be contended that the National Party Program does not represent 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 187 

This incipient modification of the poUcy of the Socialist 
parties thus acquires a pecuUar significance, because of the 
light it casts upon the tremendous, deep-lying changes in 
public opinion outside. That there will long remain a small 
group of Simon-pure, hard-shell, '^ stand pat" SociaHst 
irreconcilables is as probable as that there will remain for 
decades groups of men hopeless of betterment. For the 
majority of avowed Socialists, however, to whom the general 
ideals, rather than the abstract philosophy or ultimate pro- 
gram of their party, appeal, a progressive rapprochement 
with other democratic elements of the population seems 
decreed by the logic of our development. What will be the 
name, badge, or token of the party, parties, or allied frag- 
ments of parties, which will result from such a union or ab- 
sorption, is insignificant. The essential tendency, however, 
seems to be a progress of SociaHst parties towards coalescence 
with other democratic movements, the sociaUsts losing many 
of their separatist views, while infusing the democracy as a 
whole with broader concepts of industrial polity. 

In America the old doctrine of a class war between two 
classes must of absolute necessity be given up by the Socialist 
party and must fail of adoption by other parties. The dog- 
matic absoluteness of the position appeals, because there is 
in all of us a certain primitive downrightness, which abhors 
gradations and qualifications and delights in sharp moral 
contrasts. But the facts are in flat contradiction with this 
oversimplified theory, and to propitiate these facts, one fat 
generalization after another is vainly offered up. ^'Capital- 
ism " develops elasticity. Instead of dying of its own excesses, 
it shows wonderful recuperative and self-reforming power. 
Class hatred softens as the working class strengthens, and 

the true attitude of socialists on the olass war dootrine, ths reader is ro» 
ferred to the debates in convention. See "Proceedings of the (1908) 
National Convention," edited by John M. Work, Chicago (Socialist 
Party), 1908. (The italics are my own.) 



188 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the impending clash between the classes is always delayed. 
The absolute socialist cries **War, War/' when there is no 
war. If the owners of capital were fighting for Ufe and were 
now, as is alleged, in power, they might at least be tempted 
to restrict suffrage, censor the press, raise armies for defense, 
close schools, lock out workmen, stop philanthropy, and 
generally carry the war into the proletarian camp. 
Either the capitalists are as deficient in class consciousness 
as are the workingmen, or else the class war is a less definite 
thing than we have been taught to believe. 

What has happened is that the whole problem of the mu- 
tual relations of classes has moved from its old moorings, 
and we — all of us alike — have drifted into a new economic 
and, therefore, into a new psychological world. Just as the 
old liberalism was deaf and bhnd to the development which 
was to superimpose big business upon little business, and 
monopoly upon competition, so the old absolute socialism, 
with keener prevision, failed to realize the limitations and 
minor tendencies of the change, the persistence of the small 
farm, the survival and even the strengthening of a middle 
class, the material progress of the workingman, the possi- 
bihty of alignments in the new society different from the 
alignment within the factory. The old laissez-faire hberal 
philosophy is done for, and the old absolute socialism is 
dying in the embrace of its dead adversary. To-day even 
conservatives unhesitatingly accept reforms which, a gen- 
eration ago, would have been decried as sociaUstic, while 
socialists in good party standing propose alliances, con- 
cessions, and palliatives which would formerly have been 
called (and by the crassly logical are still called) subversive 
of socialistic doctrine and inimical to the emancipation of 
the proletariat. 

The Socialist parties of to-day are caught in a bewildering 
transition, analogous to that of their opponents. (Indeed 
they scarcely reahze now who are their opponents.) The 



DEMOCRACY AND THE CLASS WAR 189 

aging, dogmatic revolutionaries, who for forty years have 
dreamed in the dark of the hoped-for flash of Hghtning, are 
both disappointed and dazzled by the sober light of social 
reform. The revisionists, while adapting their views to 
the changed conditions, still chng desperately to a verbal 
allegiance to the old cramping doctrine of class war in order 
to distinguish themselves from the so-called bourgeois social 
reformers — themselves no less confused — who have ap- 
proached the same goal from a diametrically opposite direc- 
tion. The socialist, who is beginning to lose his faith in the 
class war and the rigorous nationalization of the means of 
production, is adopting a theory of a democratic socializa- 
tion of industry and of life ; the old individuaHst, losing his 
faith in economic harmonies that do not harmonize, and in 
the beneficence of a competition which has gone lame, is 
approaching in a more tentative manner a similar theory of 
a democratic socialization of industry and of hfe. The men 
who were sharply sundered in interests and ideals by the 
conditions of the earlier machine production have been 
brought into partial accord by the conditions of a later 
machine era. The trust builder, the monopoHzer, the new 
Titan of industry, has not only merged his factories, but 
united his opponents.^ 

In the decades to come — during the democratic sociaH- | 
zation of America which has already begun — we shall 
hear less of this doctrine of the class war. There will be 
wide-ranging conflicts between coahtions of classes, but 

' There is a naive theory that the so-called "menace of socialism" will 
disappear once its doctrines are demolished. Prove that Marx's analysis of 
surplus value is erroneous, or that his predictions concerning agricultural 
concentration are false, and lo, the repentant hosts of socialism will rally 
about the old standards. Unfortunately for its proponents, this soothing 
theory contravenes the most elemental facts of social life. Heretics do 
not so much depend upon heresies as vice versa. Men do not become dis- 
contented because they have theories, but have theories because they am 
discontented. 



^ 



190 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

there will also be adjustments and unions for the attainment 
of common aims and for a succession of compromises ren- 
dered possible by an enormous increase in the social prod- 
uct to be distributed. Democratic civiUzation will progress 
even more through adjustment and education than through 
a war which aids one class and injures another. Political 
power in the state will not change from one class to its op- 
ponent, like a reversible top or an overweighted balance, 
for the state is not, and will not be, absolutely the representa- 
tive of a single class. What will happen will be a relative 
increase of influence by certain classes through the nearer 
attainment of the rule of the majority. There will be an 
infiltration, a permeation of the state by elements more and 
more democratic. We shall grow into democracy. \ 



CHAPTER Xin 

DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 

OPPOSED to the theory that democracy is to be at- 
tained through a class war is the theory that the 
"attainment of democracy will result from a national ad- 
justment. Opposed to the theory of democratic progress 
through impoverishment is the theory of progress through 
prosperity. 

It is the increasing wealth of America, not the growing 
poverty of any class, upon which the hope of a full democracy 
must be based. It is this wealth which makes democracy 
possible and solvent, for democracy, like civilization, costs 
money. Finally it is this social surplus, our clear gain in 
wealth after the year's business is over, our excess of social 
product over social effort, which renders ignorance, poverty, 
and minority rule anachronistic, and gives to our democratic 
strivings a moral impulse and a moral sanction. /^ 

The surplus of society, which thus overrides all our 
traditions and shapes all our philosophies, is a phenomenon 
of transcendent importance. It is a new factor in man's 
career. Diiring all history, prior to the last few centuries, 
poverty, pain, and deficit ruled the world.^ Back of every 
society, simple or complex, lay the fateful force of human 
fecundity. The increasing population pressed upon the 

1 For the original statement of the transition from a pain economy to a 
pleasure economy, see the brilliant book of Professor Simon N. Patten, 
f'The Theory of Social Forces," Philadelphia (American Academy of 
Political and Social Science), 1896. Without wishing in any way to fasten 
responsibility upon Professor Patten for any of the statements in this pres- 
ent book, the author desires gratefully to make the fullest possible acknowl- 
edgment of his deep indebtedness to that great teacher. 

191 



192 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

means of subsistence. The babe pushed his parents into 
the grave. For every man killed by disease, famine, war, 
overwork, a child was born. 

During certain periods of this long reign of poverty there 
were ''Golden Ages,'' in which cities of brick were trans- 
formed into cities of marble. But this prosperity was only 
relative. The social surplus sufficed to create a lavish court, 
to build pyramids, palaces, and cathedrals, to maintain 
harems and armies, to furnish to the few a suicidal sensuality ; 
but it could not give ample bread and leisure to the swarm- 
ing people. Wretchedly poor were the hewers of wood and 
the drawers of water. The toilers who built the wonderful 
edifices of antiquity, the men who lived in the astonishing 
cities, even the Roman populace, fed by doles from the 
tribute takers of the world, were for the most part miserably 
fed, clad, and conditioned. As for the slaves, the serfs, the 
peasants of the world, they were on the lowest floor of human 
hfe. Production was limited by the narrow bounds of 
muscle power and simple tools. It was limited by the con- 
traction of the market, for commerce was largely the ex- 
change of luxuries. An ultimate prosperity for all did not 
seem conceivable. The very Utopias of ancient times were 
based upon slavery. 

The political equivalent of this early poverty was despot- 
ism. When men produce barely enough to permit a miser- 
able existence (whatever the system of distribution), there 
is small need for political rights. Men do not vote, just as 
they do not fight, unless there is something to vote or fight 
for. If through revolt the poor were to gain temporary con- 
trol, there was still not enough to go round. The scant 
social surplus was held by great lords and mihtary chiefs, 
who defended it against fecund, restless peoples, descending 
from barren lands and pressing hungrily upon the warm 
southern empires. Overpopulation meant chronic, unin- 
terrupted war. Fighting, in turn, made for despotic gov- 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 193 

eminent. From the extra-hazardous occupation of politics, 
an occupation largely compounded of flattery and assas- 
sination, the lowly were excluded. 

The intellectual equivalent of this early world poverty 
was passivity, ignorance. Oriental fatalism was a product 
of poverty, and of its accompaniments, pain, hunger, death. 
For the unnumbered human worms who lived and died, 
there was no need of education. The art of life was tradi- 
tional. The race persisted through force of a hard-shell 
conservatism, crystallized into an instinct, which took the 
place of intelligence and innovation. 

During all those thousands of years, while empires rose 
and fell, and rose and fell again, the masses of the people 
remained abject. A servile revolt was but a demand for 
straw with which to make bricks, for a little more food, for 
an abrogation, not of evils, but of unaccustomed evils. 
These revolts were futile. Even though for a moment the 
hand of the exploiter relaxed, inevitably the people sank to 
their former evil state. Religion, philosophy, superstition, 
folk-lore ; the sword, lash, wheel, gibbet, torture chamber, 
— all these but reenf orced a submission which social poverty 
imposed. 

Without an excess of wealth no democracy on a large scale 
was possible, however much men might dream dreams or 
voices cry aloud in the wilderness. The bases for such a 
surplus were not laid until the economic and political revo- 
lutions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries destroyed 
the decentralized feudal structure and called forth nations 
jd a national economy. With the demolition of local cus- 
toms barriers, commerce grew, the market was widened, 
and division of labor was rendered possible. The exploita- 
tion of American silver mines and the rounding of the Cape 
of Good Hope hastened the growth of wealth. It was not, 
however, until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that 
steam and machinery brought forth the industrial revolution. 



IM THE NEW DEMOCRACy 

and created a social surplus in comparison with which all 
prior accumulations were insignificant.^ 

For the first time there was a *' stake'' for the people, 
enough, if properly held, to provide a livable life for all the 
populations. The denial to the people of wealth and rights, 
which had found its moral justification in the early poverty 
of society, became ethically untenable. Democracy be- 
came ultimately inevitable. For in final analysis, however 
it may be clothed in legal rights and political immunities, 
democracy means material goods and the moral goods based 
thereon. It means the things that are Caesar's, the objec- 
tivized desires of men — the chances of wealth, recreation, 
leisure, culture. All these things, the product of the social 
surplus, have been multiplied almost ad infinitum by machine 
process. The opportunities of life in our new world of sur- 
plus exceed the opportunities of life in the old world of deficit 
and pain as the thousand copies of the printed book exceed 
the solitary illuminated manuscript. 

When the things that are Caesar's were provided, a new 
Caesar came into being. It was the people. The people, 
once servile, ignorant, and satisfied, had eaten of the fruit 
of the tree. The people no longer cringed. They glowered 
at the bright new wares in the windows ; they angrily broke 
the new machines which poured forth masses of wealth in 
which the workers could not share. The people, realizing 
that they were hungry (now that there was something to 
eat), began to question all the revered traditions which had 
made eating (by the vulgar) a sin, crime, and economic 
absurdity, and which had exalted abstinence as a peculiarly 
amiable popular virtue. When the people saw that the 

1 It is a curious but explicable fact that the theory which explains the 
poverty of the ancient world, the theory of population, did not receive 
authoritative expression until the age was already passing. When, in 
1798, Malthus made his famous generalizations, his conclusions, so largely 
true of the past, were already being falsified by a stupendous increase in 
productiveness and wealth. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 195 

new wealth did not descend the factory chimney of a Christ- 
mas morn ; when they saw that the new wealth did not grow 
spontaneously in the garden of the ''bread giver"; when 
they traced the wonderful new wealth to the farms, work- 
shops, and grimy factories, where very common folk worked, 
— the people began to question the morality and social 
efficiency of all historic distributions of wealth. The social 
surplus not only excited the desires but stimulated the in- 
telUgences of the people. 

The creation of a social surplus, however, does not auto- 
matically or immediately give rise to a socialized democracy. 
It creates merely the opportunity for such a democracy. 
The new wealth does not distribute itself spontaneously 
according to the needs of the population, and, for a time, an 
increase in the social product may mean an actual lessening 
of the share of the masses. 

In the beginning of the era of a great social surplus, which 
we may approximately date from 1760 in England and from 
1789 in France, the fruits of the revolutionizing discoveries 
were largely monopolized by acquisitive men. Had these 
wealthy manufacturers, themselves revolutionists and up- 
starts, been able to conserve their sudden new wealth side 
by side with a general wretchedness, ignorance, and subjec- 
tion, the masses would have secured a share of wealth and 
rights, had they secured it at all, only after the bloodiest of 
revolutions. 

Fortunately, the rising middle classes, finding themselves 
held down by a reactionary class, were compelled to appeal 
to the lowest classes. The manufacturers needed the pikes, 
guns, and clamor of the mob to overcome Swiss guards, an 
arrogant nobility, and a courtier clergy. To loosen the 
grip of the feudal fist upon their own purses, the manufac- 
turers were compelled to hold out promises to the ''lower 
orders." 

Other rights were indispensable to business, which, as 



196 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

we are gradually learning, is the core of our social arrange- 
ments. To ''entice" laborers from the stiff old agricultur- 
alists, it was necessary to give workers freedom of movement 
and of contract. Freedom of contract, sooner or later, 
meant the right to strike. Striking meant higher wages, 
shorter hours, and better conditions of work. As communi- 
cation improved, men widely separated in distance came 
into contact, and as business became concentrated, work- 
men gathered in factories and learned more from each other 
in the lunch hour than they had learned from pastor or 
school-teacher. Schools, too, were necessary, for the new 
machines could not be run by blockheads. Gradually, 
through strikes, violence, threats, through an unrest which 
was bad for business, the workers gained an extension of the 
suffrage. The majority had the vote. 

Popular suffrage does not end group struggles, but merely 
lifts them to a higher plane. A minority which has long 
ruled by its own right soon learns to rule as the theoretical 
representative of the majority. Certain forms of economic 
and intellectual pressure may make universal suffrage harm- 
less to the minority. 

Back of all political institutions, although themselves 
important, he always the essential status and character of 
the population, its wealth, inteUigence, coherence, and tradi- 
tions, and the essential character of the dominating group. 
Through industrial changes, through political battles, 
through, above all, an intellectual war d outrance, the great 
changes in the balance of power within the community take 
place. 

The vast social wealth, however, which went on accumu- 
lating in a geometrical ratio during more than a century, 
not only now makes democracy possible, by providing 
the wherewithal, but it also furnishes the weapon with 
which the democracy may be attained. That weapon 
is a moral idea. The possession by society of a great 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 197 

wealth invests the desire of the people for a fuller Hfe with 
an ethical sanction. Society can no longer interpose a non 
possumus. 

The increasing social wealth shifts the basis of social 
moraUty from a mere war ethics, from the old tribal instinct 
of group survival, to a new ethics which demands a full hfe 
for all members of society. Just as, during the last few 
millenniums, we have evolved a theory of the sanctity of 
human life, by which the saving of life becomes theoretically 
more important than even the saving of property (although 
the facts often flatly contradict this assumption), so to-day 
we are developing a theory of the dignity of human hfe, by 
which society, because of its greater wealth, becomes morally 
responsible, not only for the mere physical survival of the 
individual, but equally for the provision of facilities by which 
the highest physical, intellectual, moral, a.nd social capacities 
of all citizens, born and to be born, may best be secured. 
The old morahty, it is true, still survives. The clash be- 
tween the old and the new is seen in the struggle between 
imperiahsm and industrial democracy, between battleships 
and libraries, between the old poverty ethics of survival and 
the new wealth ethics of social improvement. 

The motive force of our modern ethics of social improve- 
ment reveals itself in a sense of disequilibrium between so- 
cial wealth and a residual misery of large sections of the 
population. Two centuries ago, when population still 
pressed narrowly upon wealth, statesmen could look cal- 
lously upon starvation, imprisonment for debt, and the 
hanging of vulgar rogues who stole a shilling and a penny. 
If fifty per cent and, in some years, seventy-five per cent 
of London babies died in the year, were there not too many 
people anyway? But to-day our surplus has made us as 
sensitive to misery, preventable death, sickness, hunger, 
and deprivation as is a photographic plate to Hght. The 
disequihbrium between social surplus and social misery 



198 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

colors all our thoughts. It is the basis of our social unrest. 
It causes the stirrings of uneasy social consciences. 

It is also responsible for a more sober and searching social 
analysis. A salient fact about our modern social thinking 
is that we no longer so light-heartedly attribute to a personal 
delinquency the residual, persistent poverty of great masses 
of the population. We no longer so often hear the dictum 
that any one who wants a job can get one ; that no man need 
be idle ; that all men can save against the rainj^ day, when 
they may be injured by industrial accident or discharged 
because of middle age. We have become more temperate 
in our social judgments and our social admonitions. The 
beautiiul industrial idyls of half a century ago, the charm- 
ing inculcation of thrift to the desperately poor, the stories of 
the astounding progress of the newsboy and the grocer's clerk 
(who inevitably marries the daughter of his employer), have 
given way to somber investigations of the real conditions of 
newsboys, messenger boys, grocers' clerks, et al., and to a very 
wide bookshelf on the influence of evil industrial conditions 
upon the virtues and vices of the industrial classes. 

The disequilibrium between social surplus and social 
misery is weighing like a great moral incubus upon thousands 
of the beneficiaries of present arrangements. To-day there 
are many rich men who lie awake nights, and not through 
fear. These men are not bound by narrow class ethics, but 
echo distinctly the moral feehngs of the mass, from which 
they have so recently risen, as a man on the fringe of a crowd 
may still be subject to its radiated will. The philanthropist 
(the rich man with a conscience) speaks of social '^mal- 
adjustment" and strives for '^ social betterment." Such a 
man, far from desiring the impoverishment and brutalization 
of the mass (were that now possible), is compelled by an 
ethical imperative to demand, in the interest of the general 
community, reforms by no means in harmony with the special 
interests of favored classes. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 199 

Upon the wide democratic masses, the social disequiUbrium 
exercises a far more direct and potent influence. With 
these classes, the theory that social wealth should be de- 
voted to social uses — in ways to be determined by society 
— becomes axiomatic. It becomes a fixed idea. This 
impelling idea is all-conquering. By creating this idea, 
the growth of the social surplus lends to the democratic 
masses a vast new impetus to action. 

For, fundamentally, it is ideas, born of conditions, which 
rule the world. Without an idea to back it, force is not 
permanently effective. Without an idea, men will not 
risk their fives or fortunes, will not take off their easy slip- 
pers and comfortable smoking jackets, will not spend long 
evenings on dreary committees. The idea which animates 
a great group, which holds it together in defeat and delay, 
is something different from the sudden, angry mob spirit. 
Ideas are mortal. They are vulnerable to argument. If a 
popular idea therefore survives in the struggle of all ideas 
for the possession of men's minds, if it survives to be effective 
and to leaven the mass, it is only because it closely corre- 
sponds, not perhaps to social facts, but to social needs and 
aspirations. Such an idea, slowly formed in the minds 
of millio];is by the deposition of myriads of impressions, 
slowly hardened by resistance to other ideas and molded 
by adjustment to new facts, gradually accumulates suflSi- 
cient force to arouse multitudes and to convert them to a 
flaming ideal. What incites every manifestation of social 
power is this idea, bred of social conditions and social 
needs. 

This idea of the social disequifibrium is a conception 
based on actuafity and corresponding to the needs of the most 
numerous and potentially most powerful elements of the 
community. It is the instinct of a fuller fife for the mass* 
It is a turning of the people to the great social surplus, a 
movement as spontaneous and resistless as the advance of A 



200 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

hungry horde upon a fertile, Hfe-giving plain. It is a new 
version of the hfe-old quest of food, 
r* To-day a progressive, though slow, diffusion of wealth 
I already gives to all a foretaste of the civihzed hfe which 
it can create. Once the giving of bread and fishes to the 
multitude was a miracle, for there were in all the world 
not bread enough and fishes enough to go around. To-day 
food and material and moral goods for all being provided, a 
fairer distribution has become an imperative ethical demand. 
Out of the ever-growing disproportion between social 
surplus and social misery, there evolves the doctrine of 
exploitation, a doctrine as yet vague and illogical, but 
slowly crystalHzing into a sentiment which identifies social 
injustice with excessive claims upon the surplus. 

About this demand for a full fife for all the people cluster 
a host of ethical ideas — clear or confused. The right of the 
laborer to the entire product of labor; the right of the 
community to the social value created by the community — 
to the unearned increment ; the belief in society as the 
ultimate inventor of all inventions and the ultimate designer 
of all improvements, — are all by-products of the hopes excited 
by the social surplus. The possibility of giving a full fife to 
all the people has remolded our religion, changed the basis 
of our ethics, and revolutionized our historical conceptions. 
It has put down the mighty ''great man," who once obsessed 
history, and has exalted those of low degree, the unnamed 
multitude. It has caused the individual to shrink; it has 
wonderfully expanded the hitherto dumb crowcl. It is 
gradually destroying all ideals of prerogative and privilege, 
God-given, law-given, wealth-given, and is reducing all in- 
equalities to the one inequality of heredity. It has shifted 
the burden of proof to the shoulders of those who are satis- 
fied with present social conditions. 

The gradually increasing share of the people in the social 
surplus has not only strengthened these conceptions (since 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 201 

the appetite for life grows with the larger Hfe it feeds on), but 
it gives to the success of the popular struggle for the rest 
of the surplus a certain sense of inevitableness. The funda- 
mental behef in the ultimate success of the people rests in 
final analysis upon the success hitherto attained. The 
economic determinism which makes laws, ethics, political 
institutions, and social theories largely the reflex of changing 
economic conditions seems itself to be a reflex of the past suc- 
cess of the mass in securing a larger share of the surplus. Since 
the masses have grown in wealth, they have become confident 
of ultimate victory. The best augury of the coming democ- 
racy is its first fruits. 

To America this social surplus promises more than to other 
nations. Never in history has there been a social surplus 
equal to that of America to-day, or at all comparable with 
the surplus which the still undeveloped resources of the 
scarred continent are to bring forth. Of all the children 
of the Industrial Revolution, America — one of the youngest 
— is the most favored.^ 

This incomparable wealth present, and above all prospec- 
tive, gives to the democratic movement in this country a tone 
different from that of England, Germany, France, or Belgium. 
It makes our past blunders seem mere youthful pranks. It 
makes us preeminently the heirs of science and invention. 
Science, more mobile even than money, goes where money is ; 
and America, because her wealth is greater, profits in greater 
measure than other nations from the inventions of those 
nations. 

It is our future wealth, due to the fact that we still occupy 
a continent, preempted but still fertile, that enlarges our 

^ England, which is the great creditor nation of the world, has a larger 
per capita wealth than has the United States, but its total wealth (or that 
of the United Kingdom) is much less than that of this country. In Amer- 
ica, moreover, wealth is increasing far more rapidly, both relatively and 
absolutely, than elsewhere. 



202 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

hopes. Under a perfect system of production and distribu- 
tion, the average Italian would not be so well off as is to-day 
the average American under our most imperfect system.^ 
The bitterness of group struggles in Belgium, Italy, Austria, 
is born of their relative poverty. In those lands intelligence 
and energy constantly push forward their frontiers — but, 
at best, they are not continents.^ 

There are exalted and impatient souls who pay no heed 
to tales of mere material progress. They beheve that the 
geniuses — the Shakespeares, Beethovens, BotticelUs, Kants, 
Darwins — do not arise in the pork-and-pig-iron-producing 
nations ; that a full belly means an empty mind ; and that 
they who wax fat kick against the Lord. They are willing, 
with Renan, to give up America and all her future for 
medieval Florence ; and, like Carlyle, they have no patience 
with a boundless land, which produces only dollars and 
bores. In the eyes of such men America's wealth is her 
weakness. 

Nevertheless a palpable nexus exists between a modicum 
of national wealth and the elements of democracy and 
civilization. Intellectual and moral progress cost money as 
do steam engines and Dreadnoughts. Money — though 
only a part — is necessary for education, sanitation, leisure, 
and the amenities of Ufe; for schools, universities, libra- 



* According to the estimate of Pantaleoni, made in 1889, the wealth of 
Italy was 55 milliards of francs (less than eleven thousand million dollars). 
In 1902 Nitti estimated this wealth as being not less than 65 milliards, 
"troppo poco senza duhhio," for a country of about thirty-three million 
inhabitants. Nitti, Francesco S., *' Lezioni di Scienza delle Finanze,'* 
Naples, 1902, pp. 110, 111. 

2 That America is so wealthy in prospect is due to no inherent superiority 
of Americans. We cannot claim exceptional virtues, marking us off from 
less favored breeds. We had the one virtue of adapting ourselves — for 
better and for worse — to an entirely new environment, but what we have 
accomplished must be attributed primarily to that favoring environment. 
A vigorous, intelligent, and enterprising people (of which there are many) 
found Itself in surprised possession of almost illimitable resources. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 203 

ries, research institutes, art galleries, hospitals, museums, 
theaters, conservatories, magazines, books, parks, improved 
houses, better factories, clothing, shelter, recreation, and 
the endowment and production of what is good and worth 
while. Eight hundred million dollars intelligently spent on 
education is better than four hundred millions. The growth 
of two bales of cotton, or two bushels of wheat, where one 
grew before, may make the difference between a besotted, 
superstitious, and reactionary people and an intelligent, 
cultured, and progressive people. Until the material prob- 
lems which beset mankind are solved ; until misery, disease, 
crime, insanity, drunkenness, degeneration, ignorance, and 
greed — which are the offspring (as also the parents) of 
poverty — are removed (and their removal costs money), 
humanity will not be able to essay the problems of mind and 
of social intercourse. Our chance in America of an even- 
tual civilization rising above the demand for daily bread and 
more money depends upon our wise utilization of our 
national resources and our national earnings. However 
spiritual a structure civilization is, it is nevertheless built 
upon wheat, pork, steel, money, wealth. 

Our wealth is already so gigantic as to be almost incom- 
prehensible. A bilUon dollars exceeds the fortune of any 
individual since the world began. It is like a ^^Hght-year'' 
or some other convenient but unimaginable astronomical 
term. Yet in 1904 our national wealth was estimated by 
the census authorities at 107 of these bilUons of dollars. 
The present estimated wealth of New York State is twice the 
entire estimated wealth of the United States in 1850. We 
would sell under the hammer for fifteen times as much as 
we would have done a little over half a century ago.^ 

1 This comparison is, of course, only rudely approximate. The pos- 
sessions enumerated by the census are actual material things (property, 
not deeds, mortgages, or paper evidence of ownership) . But the conception 
of property changes. Valuable slaves in 1860 ceased to be property in 1865, 
and forms of wealth exist in 1911 which did not exist in 1850. Moreover, 



204 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The wealth of America, moreover, is not a secret hoard 
to which new billions are brought and added. It is a hving 
thing, which grows at a stupendous rate as new millions of 
men pour into the land, and new machines, new scientific 
processes, new methods of organization, lay the continent 
wider open. From 1870 to 1900 our wealth increased at the 
rate of almost two billions a year ; from 1900 to 1904 it 
recorded an apparent increase of almost five billions a year. 
During every eighteen months of those four years there 
was added to our possessions an increment greater than 
the whole estimated wealth of the country in 1850. 

Everywhere are signs of a stupendous productiveness. 
The number of our horses, sheep, mules, swine increases ; 
our production of wheat, corn, cotton, rice, has enormously 
grown. So also our mineral production. In 1840 we 
produced less than two million long tons of coal ; in 1909 
we produced four hundred and eleven millions. The mere 
increase in coal production in 1907 over that of the preceding 
year was about equal to the entire output of all the country's 
mines during the eighty-five years from the Declaration 
of Independence to the outbreak of the Civil War. 

In 1870 we produced three million long tons of iron ore ; 
in 1909, fifty-one millions. Our pig iron production, which 
never amounted to a million long tons before 1864, increased 
to almost twenty-seven millions in 1910. The production 
of steel, which remained below one milhon tons until 1880, 
rose to twenty-four milUons in 1909. Enormously rapid, 
also, has been the increase in our output of gold, aluminium, 
cement, copper, lead, salt, stone, and zinc; while our pro- 
duction of petroleum, which averaged about a hundred 
million gallons a year during the Civil War, rose in 1909 to 
over seven and one half billions of gallons. 

the standard of value changes and money does not go so far to-day as when 
Washington threw the silver dollar across the Potomac. Nevertheless, 
An enormous increase in the real wealth of the country is indisputable. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL SURPLUS 205 

Our American agriculture has not only fed our growing 
population, but it still permits vast exportations of 
grain, flour, and meat products. Moreover, it has been 
carried on by a steadily lessening proportion of the capital 
and labor of the country. There has been simultaneously 
an almost bewildering increase in our manufacturing indus- 
tries. 

When we try to visualize the statistics of our American 
railroads, the mind sinks exhausted under the effort. The 
traffic increases incessantly and enormously. While our 
population has not quite doubled in thirty-three years, our 
railroad passenger and freight traffics have more than 
doubled in nine years. In 1909 our railroad freight mileage 
was equivalent to the work of our ninety-two millions of 
inhabitants carrying each a load of over four hundred pounds 
a distance of over thirty miles each day. This enormous 
traffic, like the tremendously increasing water carriage on 
the Great Lakes, reveals the actual and potential power of 
the machine-aided American nation. 

It is figures like these, almost inconceivable in their 
totals, which give to Americans their abiding sense in the 
infinite potentialities of the continent. From the beginning 
the continent poured forth new millions, and later new billions, 
of wealth. An invention which netted the discoverer a few 
thousands or hundreds of thousands brought to the nation 
hundreds of millions of dollars. Better methods, improved 
machinery, a more scientific and effective organization of 
industry, combined to increase our stupendous productive- 
ness. Our national resources were enormously increased 
by discoveries of new foods, by new uses to which the land 
might be put. 

So much for the wonders of the past. But they are 
wonders only so long as we think solely in terms of the past. 
Actually our utifization of the continent has hardly begun. 
It has hardly begun to begin. 



206 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

When we regard the vast domain of the United States as 
a business man regards his plant, from the point of view of 
maximum possibihties, we realize how far we are from a 
reasonable exploitation of our resources. Our total farm 
production is almost nine billions of dollars (or almost 
five hundred dollars for every family in America), and yet 
we usually average less than fifteen bushels of wheat per 
acre and less than two fifths of a bale of cotton per acre. 
We have cotton farmers planting the small seed, using the 
worst methods, wasting the most fertile lands. When we 
compare the worst, or even the average, production in 
America (in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transporta- 
tion, and everything else) with the best ; when we remember 
that our present stupendous wealth is based upon an igno- 
rant, wasteful, and inefficient exploitation of resources, — we 
begin to arrive at some vague conception of what, under a 
proper social and industrial pohty, could be made of our 
continent, of this vast physical substratum of our hoped- 
for American democracy. 

Even to-day, with a poor national economy, we do not owe 
our worst evils to any corporate poverty. Even to-day we 
could, with a better distribution, provide a livable life for 
many more millions than our present population. Already 
the most stupendous social undertakings are carried out 
with the greatest ease. Our billion-and-a-half-dollar Con- 
gresses of to-day hardly cost us as much as the twenty- 
milhon-dollar Congresses cost the Americans of 1810. A 
century ago the nation found it more difficult to pay fifteen 
milhon dollars for Louisiana than to-day to pay twenty-five 
times that much for the Panama Canal. The more than a 
third of a bilhon of dollars which that canal represents 
about equals one month's accretion to the national 
wealth. 

f A great social surplus, however, does not mean that a 
[democracy is attained, but only that it is attainable. With- 



DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCUL SURPLUS ^)7 

out social wealth, a real democracy is not possible ; with it, 
it is not inevitable. 

The masses of the people, if they are to secure a democracy, 
must not fall or remain below the three levels of democratic 
striving. Below the economic level of democratic striving, 
men are for the most part too ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-conditioned, 
too depressed by want or sickness, too harassed by debt or 
insecurity, too brutahzed by child labor or overwork, 
or too demoralized by recurring unemployment to maintain 
the morale required for the attainment of democracy. Below 
the intellectual level of democratic striving, most men are 
too credulous, too suspicious, too immersed in petty pre- 
occupations, too narrow-viewed to perceive their individual 
interest in the wider interest of group or nation, and they 
are too near-minded to value the larger social gain of the 
future above the smaller social or personal gain of the moment. 
Below the political level of democratic striving, men are too 
unused to political weapons, or too removed from them, to 
be able effectively to translate their economic and intellectual 
powers into pohtical facts. To achieve a real popular 
sovereignty, the masses of the people must rise or remain 
above all of these levels. 

Of these three levels the economic and the intellectual 
are the more important, for a voteless people with economic 
and intellectual resources can better secure political repre- 
sentation than can an impoverished and ignorant people 
in full possession of pohtical rights. All these three levels 
are in a sense connected and all are related to the social 
surplus. It is the social surplus which permits the economic 
advance of the people, which in turn facilitates their intellec- 
tual enfranchisement, which in turn tends strongly in the 
direction of pohtical representation. The lack of complete 
parallehsm between these three levels results in many of the 
worst abuses of our pseudo-democratic government of to-day. 
The possession of the vote by ignorant masses below the 



208 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

poverty line leads to sluggish, reckless, or perverse legislation 
and seems to justify the most hopeful fears of interested 
reactionaries. But the true remedy for these evils is not 
what the reactionaries desire, a change in the political level, 
but, on the contrary, a raising of the people to a higher 
economic and intellectual level. lUiterates should not be 
obliged to stay away from the voting booth, but voters 
should be obliged to learn their letters, in much the same 
way that we compel incarcerated tramps to submit to an 
initial bath. The parallelism between these three levels 
should be maintained by the steady rise of larger and 
larger sections of the people above all three levels, to a 
position in which the economic, intellectual, and pohtical 
weapons of the people may be effectively used in their 
common interest. 

Thus, though the accumulations of the great industrial 
nations render democracy possible, and furnish a stake, 
motive, and ethical justification to democrats ; though in 
America this social wealth is so stupendously growing as to 
place, beyond even the possibility of doubt, our abihty, present 
and future, to pay for such a democracy, — s till, wh ether or 
not we shall achieve democracy depends upon th ese ot her 
factors, upon the character of our population^- .upoDUlts 
mean position above or below the levels of democrajbic 
striving. Given the energizing moral impulse of the startling 
disequilibrium between our social wealth and our abiding 
poverty, it is still essential that the mass of the population 
have sufficient wealth or income, sufficient intelligence and 
clearness of perception, sufficient pohtical power, pohtical 
experience, and political wisdom (as well as a high enough 
capacity for joint action), to permit them unitedly to do their 
part in wresting a democracy from men who have an inter- 
ested attachment to present conditions. The^ attainment of 
democracy depends upon the all-of-us, upon the qualities 
and resources of the potentially overwhelming democratic 
masses. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 

IT is difficult to translate the economic level of demo- 
cratic striving from the field of theory to the field of 
practice. It is difficult to say of any group what sum of 
wealth or what annual income will divide its members into 
two sections, of which the upper is likely, and the lower is 
unlikely, to become a prime factor in the attainment of 
democracy. Like the blurred line which we seek to draw be- 
tween the conceptions of luxuries and necessities, of skilled 
labor and unskilled labor, of interest and usury, like many 
other conceptions of economic science, that of the level 
which separates the economically emerged from the economi- 
cally submerged is wavering, indistinct, changing. The 
level is not uniform for all countries, nor for all sections, 
classes, and industrial groups within a country. It is not 
invariable, but changes from decade to decade with changes 
in the cost of living and the cost of education and communi- 
cation. A wage or income which in a New Hampshire town 
provides leisure, education, and an ambitious discontent may 
in New York City compel a resort to charity, and an income 
which might have sufficed a dozen years ago might to-day 
depress a group below the economic level. Whether four 
hundred, six hundred, or nine hundred dollars a year es- 
tablishes the limit of family earnings, below which economic 
pressure and degradation will prevent men from taking a 
wide view of group and national interests, is a question 
depending upon a large group of changing factors. 

One thing, however, seems certain. The economic level 
of democratic striving is above what has been called the 

p 209 



210 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

''poverty line." That line, which may be called the level 
of mere physicial efficiency, is exceedingly low. ''Let us 
clearly understand,'' says B. Seebohm Rowntree,^ in speak- 
ing of the great masses of the EngUsh poor, "what 'merely 
physical efficiency' means. A family living upon the scale 
allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on 
railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the 
country unless they walk. They must never purchase a 
halfpenny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for 
a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent 
children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They 
must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or 
give any help to neighbor which costs them money. They 
cannot save, nor can they join sick club or Trade Union, 
because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The 
children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or 
sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco, and must drink 
no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for 
herself or for her children, the character of the family ward- 
robe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation, 
'Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely 
necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what 
is bought must be of the plainest and most economical 
description.' Should a child fall ill, it must be attended 
by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by 
the parish. Finally, the wage earner must never be absent 
from his work for a single day." 

Even above the hne of "merely physical efficiency," 
even above the so-called poverty line, the demorahzing 
effects of insufficient income affect large groups of the 
population. 

That the average citizen is advancing in wealth and income 
seems equally probable from general observations and from 

1 "Poverty. A Study of Town Life," London (Macmillan & Co.), 
1901, pp. 133, 134. 



THE LEVELS OP DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 211 

a study of statistics. It is not contended that the common 
run of us have as large a proportion of the national wealth 
as formerly, since a larger amount and a larger proportion 
of that wealth are being progressively absorbed by a rela- 
tively small minority of the population. It is at least 
probable, if not certain, however, that, leaving out of account 
this wealthy minority, the remainder of the ninety-two 
milHons of Americans to-day are far more prosperous than 
were the fifty millions of 1880, the twenty-three millions 
of 1850, or the five millions of 1800. No one can travel 
through the country districts of America, or through the 
streets of our cities, without noting evidences of a widespread 
prosperity, small when compared with realizable ideals, but 
enormous when compared with that of the average English- 
man, Frenchman, German, or Italian, or with that of the 
average American of a generation, or two, or three ago. 

The farmer has undoubtedly improved his status. It 
must be remembered, of course, that the farmer is a composite, 
not a simple type, and that there is as wide a distinction 
between the economic status of farmers and of farmers as 
there is between that of lawyers and of lawyers. The Negro 
tenant of Mississippi has as little in common with the large 
dairy farmer of Iowa as the small proprietor in the Catskills 
or Berkshires has with the ranch owner of Texas or the fruit 
grower of Southern Cahfornia. Not all farming districts 
started equally, and not all have progressed equally. 

The better farms of to-day are far better than were those 
of 1860. The farmhouses, barns, stock, and farm imple- 
ments are improved. The food on the farmer's table, the 
carpet on his floor, the curtains in his window, the pictures 
on his walls, the books and magazines on his shelf, everything 
which he eats, wears, or lives in, show a change. Labor- 
saving devices enter his house and farm. His school 
is better. Often a trolley car passes his door. The rural 
free dehvery brings him into touch with the thought and 



212 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

business life of the city, while the rural telephone connects 
him with the farmers of the vicinity. What the farmer buys 
— furniture, ornaments, carriages, bicycles, occasionally 
even automobiles — as well as the enormous exodus from the 
farm to the State university, indicates a revolutionary rise in 
standards of Hving. The farmer's savings in banks and 
insurance companies, his investments in village business 
enterprises and in the capital of local banks, show plainly 
that he is emerging from his former money poverty. He is 
changing otherwise. The typical farmer of caricature — 
the credulous, inquisitive, hard-fisted, straw-chewing hay- 
seed — disappears. The farmer who visits Chicago is not 
distinguishable among its citizens. The farmer is no longer 
isolated. He is not a serf attached by habit and poverty to 
his land. The farmer of to-day has one foot in the 
city.i 

A similar rise in the standard of living in the cities is 
revealed by general visual impressions. The citizens, as 
judged by their clothes, shoes, gloves, underwear, houses, 
bathtubs, recreation, travel, and a hundred other everyday 
things, are better off. The shops patronized by the poorer 
classes have a greater variety and a better quality of wares. 
The cities, with few exceptions, have rapidly expanded, and 
cheap new houses have arisen everywhere. The housing 
conditions of Philadelphians, Chicagoans, and Bostonians are 
hardly to be compared with the far inferior accommodations 
of a generation ago. Gas, electricity, gas ranges, more 
rooms, better furniture, and more sanitary toilet accommoda- 

1 Our agriculturalists, during the thi'ee centuries of white settlement in 
America, always maintained a certain level of rude comfort, having ample 
wheat bread, corn, pork, milk, butter, chickens, eggs, firewood, and home- 
spun clothing. For the greater part of our national existence our farmers, 
who lived not far differently from their laborers, and, in certain portions 
of the Southern frontier, not far differently from their slaves, secured by 
much labor ample quantities of coarse food and such necessaries and com- 
forts as could be made on the farm or bought in the up-growing cities. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 213 

tions evidence a complete revolution in standards. The 
food of working people has improved in quality, increased in 
quantity, and been extended in variety. An increase is 
shown in the quantity, quahty, and variety of the clothing, 
furniture, and similar articles of use. The old joke about 
the maidservant outdressing her mistress has almost 
ceased to be a joke and become a social phenomenon. No- 
where in the world is there so lavish (and often so mis- 
directed and perverse) an expenditure upon clothing, food, 
furniture, etc., as in the United States to-day. 

The enormous expansion in the use of electric cars, tele- 
phones, tobacco, beer, coffee, sugar, fresh fruits, fresh 
vegetables, canned goods, etc., indicates this change. There 
is much waste. Men and women are to-day breaking and 
wasting in kitchen and drawing-room with the insane dis- 
proportionate lavishness of the pioneer who slashed and 
burned and wasted in the wilderness. We buy more for 
display and less for solid comfort than ever before. Never- 
theless our new standards of living show not only present 
prosperity, but also (because of the weight which wealth 
gives to numbers) the potentiality of a still better Ufe for 
the million.^ 

Fortunately we are not dependent upon mere visual 
impressions for our belief that the material power of 
the mass of Americans is on the increase. Our statistics 
point the same way. They throw at least a reflected 
light upon wealth, wages, savings, and standards of 
living. 

That the wealth of the farming population is widely 
diffused may be gathered from a consideration of the statistics 
of the value and size of farms. From 1850 to 1900 the value 
of farm property increased 415 per cent as compared with 

^ A succession of foreign observers visiting America have come to the 
conclusion that the working classes in America are as well fed, as well 
clothed, and as well housed as are the lower middle classes of Europe. 



214 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

an increase of 226 per cent in population and of 149 per cent 
in rural population.^ The value of farms and farm property 
(including cash and sundry live capital in the hands of farm- 
ers) amounted in 1905 to a total of twenty-seven and a half 
billions of dollars, a huge capital which, though not evenly 
distributed, represents a decentralized and widely owned 
industry, with a large annual surplus, owned and secured by 
large sections of the community. 

It is of course true that we have great farms. But 
our estates of over one thousand acres formed in 1900 
less than 8 per cent of the value of all farm prop- 
erty, while over 86 per cent of the value of American 
farms were in properties of less than five hundred acres, 
and over 71 per cent in farms of less than two hundred and 
sixty acres.2 Despite the fact that the great American farm, 
with its 841,000,000 acres (in 1900), has always been the goose 
that laid the golden egg (which golden egg has rolled off to 
the city, instead of waiting on the farm to be assessed by the 
census enumerator), the increase in the value of farms held 
outright by the cultivator or his neighbor has increased 
enormously. In 1900 there were 5,700,000 farms (not farm 
owners) worth an average of $3550 per farm. An enormous 
majority of these farms were valued at from $1000 to 
$8000. 

It is scarcely possible within the hmits of a chapter to 
indicate (to say nothing of proving) the great material prog- 
ress of the mass of the population. Our farm statistics 
show that our distribution of wealth and income is not as 
grotesquely unequal as many writers claim, nor as unequal 

1 A part of this increased value is probably to be accounted for by 
changes in the value of money. 

2 In 1900 our 5,211,842 farms of less than two hundred and sixty acres 
had an average value of a little over $2800, while all farms of two hundred 
and sixty acres and over had an average value of a little over eleven thou- 
sand dollars. For the basis of these calculations, see Twelfth Census of 
the United States, Volume V. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 215 

as in several countries of Europe. Our wage statistics show 
a level of industrial remuneration greatly in excess of that 
in any country of Europe, and still rising, though at a 
slackened rate. 

It is exceedingly difficult to give in statistical form the 
difference between wages in America and Europe. Real 
wages depend not only upon what is in the weekly pay 
envelope, but also upon the prices of ordinary articles of 
consumption, upon the amount of seasonal interruption and 
of unemployment for other causes, upon the length of the 
trade Hfe, upon the provision of governmental insurance, 
and upon other factors. The real difference in favor of the 
American workman is less than the apparent difference. 
The weekly wages of bricklayers in American cities are from 
two and a half to three times the wages of bricklayers in the 
cities of the United Kingdom, but the actual superiority of 
the American bricklayers is smaller. From various official 
reports and analyses of wages in the United States, the United 
Kingdom, and Germany, however, it would appear that, 
all deductions made, there remains a substantial advan- 
tage to the American workingman, an advantage which, for 
the chief trades, cannot be estimated at less than from 
50 to 80 per cent. In other words, were the English or 
German workman to earn American wages and pay 
American prices for articles and services generally similar 
to those which he now consumes, he would be able to save 
an amoimt equal to from 50 to 80 per cent of his present 
wages. 

There are many outstanding facts which point to the 
superior economic status of the workman in America. One 
of these is our enormous and increasing immigration, although 
it must here be borne in mind that the source of our immigra- 
tion has shifted from countries with higher, to countries with 
lower, scales of industrial remuneration. Another, though 
a less distinct, indication is afforded by our far smaller use 



216 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of the labor of women, and especially of married women, than 
is made in other industrial countries.^ A third indication is 
foimd in the relative wages of certain groups, — the wages of 
agricultural laborers, of clerks, of women generally, of do- 
mestic servants, etc. 

If we fix our eyes neither upon the advance scouts nor upon 
the stragglers in the industrial army, but upon the rank and 
file, we find, despite a constant immigration of workers from 
countries upon a lower economic level, a general status far 
above that of the leading industrial nations of Europe. 
This better condition is revealed in the consumption of 
wealth. '^The American (workman)," writes an English 
observer, ^'having the control of a larger income, has de- 
veloped a wider range of tastes and wants. ... He dresses 
better, eats more varied and expensive food, travels more, and 
reads more." 

When we consider not only the urban worker, but the great 
masses of the community with average or small incomes, our 
statistics of consumption acquire a new relevance. When 
we endeavor to see who actually consumes our annual pro- 
duction of goods and services, we are reenforced in our belief 

1 In the United States the proportion of gainfully employed females 
to the whole number of persons gainfully employed was 18.20 per cent. 
In France (1901) the proportion was 34.52 per cent; in Germany (1907), 
33.79 per cent; in Austria (1900), 42.18; in Hungary (1900), 29.68 per 
cent; in Italy (1901), 32.47 per cent; in Belgium (1900), 29.20 per cent. 
See the Fourth Abstract of Foreign Labor Statistics, Board of Trade 
(U. K.), London, 1911, on pages 4 and 5 of which is given a statement of 
the original German, French, Austrian, Hungarian, Belgian, Italian, and 
American sources from which these comparative results have been ob- 
tained. The value of the comparison is conditioned by the fact that the 
various statistical authorities do not exactly agree in determining the 
meaning of gainful employment. A comparison of the relative numbers 
of men and women employed respectively in the United States and in 
Great Britain in a number of trades, cotton manufactures, wool and 
worsted, carpets, tailoring, etc., bears out the same relation. In 1901, 
29.07 per cent of all persons gainfully employed in the United Kingdom 
were females. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 217 

a^ to the overwhelming aggregate economic power of the great 
mass of the population. 

For whose benefit, for whose ultimate consumption, is our 
vast annual production? 

In the year 1909, according to the estimate of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, we had a wealth produc- 
tion upon our farms of eight and three quarter billions of 
dollars, or of almost five hundred dollars for every American 
family. Disregarding articles exported (and duplications), 
who ate the wheat, the corn, the oats, the potatoes, the sugar, 
the milk, the butter, the cheese, the chickens? Who con- 
sumed the cotton, hay, tobacco? The production of food 
is almost entirely a production for the great mass. Olives, 
pates de foie gras, champagne, do not weigh in the balance 
with bread and sausage and pork. We hear occasionally 
of a fifty-dollar-a-plate dinner. We hear less often of the 
250,000,000 simpler meals which are taken daily in the United 
States. 

The same is true of our manufactured articles. In 1905 
we produced roughly $320,000,000 worth of boots and shoes 
and $70,000,000 of rubber boots and shoes. How many of 
these did the rich consume ? Who ate $270,000,000 worth 
of bakers' bread ? Who ate those five billion loaves ? Who 
consumed the $78,000,000 of canned goods, the $602,000,000 
of men's and women's clothing ; the $450,000,000 of cotton 
goods; the $713,000,000 of flour and grist mill products; 
the $298,000,000 of malt Uquors; the $801,000,000 of 
slaughtering and meat packing (wholesale) the $277,000,000 
of sugar and molasses? Who consumed the lumber, the 
paper, the glass, the hardware, the hats, the leather goods, 
the linen, the marble, the oil, the lead pencils ? Who ate the 
$29,000,000 of pickles ? orsmoked the $331,000,000 of tobacco, 
cigars, and cigarettes ? 

Everywhere it is the great mass which buys, the men with 
incomes from $500 to $5000 ; and not the few great spenders 



218 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

with incomes in the tens of thousands. Our houses are in 
the aggregate the houses of the poor and of the middle classes. 
The million-dollar palace does not begin to compare in the 
aggregate with the three-thousand-dollar house, which the 
people own or rent. Steam yachts are built for the rich. 
How much of the wealth of the country goes into steam 
yachts compared with that which goes into trolley cars for 
the use of the people ? Automobiles, beginning with the rich, 
have come down to the moderately wealthy, to small business 
men and farmers. Yet compare them with the farmers' 
wagons. Who, rich or poor, buys the harvesters, plows, 
agricultural machinery ? Who buys the books, the magazines, 
the newspapers?^ 

The enormous consumption every year is a consumption 
by the average American, by the comfortable, and especially 
by the poor, by the people who must work to hve. If each 
poor and middle class family had an average income of only 
one dollar per day (twenty cents per person), it would mean 
a total expenditure of well over six bilHons of dollars a year. 
An added expenditure of one cent per day per person on 
luxuries aggregates a total of three hundred and thirty-five 
minions of dollars per year. 

We are singularly neglectful of such facts and curiously 
oblivious of our vast new expenditures, which signify so 
complete a revolution in popular standards of living. Every 
week Americans travel 550,000,000 miles upon trains. 
Every year they spend $564,000,000 on railroad tickets. 

1 In simple uncommercial communities (as in Europe during the Middle 
Ages) the wealthy did not directly consume great masses of commodities, 
but hired servants to eat for them and to wear out clothes for them. We 
have no statistics of our modern retinues of servants, and we do not know 
the number of domestic servants in families keeping, let us say, over one 
servant. The number, however, is probably not great. Even our richest 
families set limits to the numbers of their idle retainers, and "vicarious 
consumption" by servants is not so popular an ostentation as it was in 
Bimpler days, when there was no other equally spectacular way of spending 
money. 



M 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 219 

It means a new national habit. To-day there are over three 
and one half million telephone subscribers and over one 
connection daily for every family in the United States. 
Street car riding for pleasure, city pleasure parks, summer 
vacations, the purchase of books, magazines, and newspapers, 
the enormous extension of the five-cent cigar, the democratiza- 
tion of watches, bicycles, cameras, carpets, etc., signify a 
change within the last half a century of the farthest-reaching 
proportions.^ 

Nor do individual purchases measure the increased eco- 
nomic power of the average man. To-day we are spending 
far more through our national. State, and local governments 
than ever before. In 1870 we spent less than $8 per family 
on our public schools; to-day we are spending well over 
$22. No one can study the branching social activities of 
cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and 
smaller places without realizing the enormously increased 
spending power of the masses of the community. 

This spending does not exhaust the earnings of the average 
American. It is no longer contended that all deposits in 
savings banks are made by workingmen or even by poor 
men; and, indeed, it is widely known that quite wealthy 
men often have deposits in various savings banks. Never- 
theless, as an indication of the saving capacity of the 
average mass, the increase in savings bank deposits is not with- 
out significance. Until 1858 these deposits never amounted 
to one hundred million dollars. In 1870 they amounted to 

^ A highly significant indication of the increased spending power of the 
masses is furnished by the vast sums devoted both to cheap and to more 
expensive amusements. In the course of a generation the salaries of actors, 
vaudeville artists, baseball players, etc., has enormously increased as a 
result of the flood of wealth pouring from the pockets of the people. Mr. 
Keith (a great vaudeville promoter) has recently said, "It is not uncommon 
now for artists to receive as high as $2500 a week in vaudeville, and it is a 
fact in high-priced houses in the East and West, the average show, which 
used to cost $500 to $600 a week, now costs from $3000 to $4500," Tha 
New York Review, quoted in the Literary Digest, October 7, 1911. 



220 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

five; in 1880, to eight ; in 1890, to fifteen ; andin 1910, to forty 
hundreds of milHons. The amount of ordinary fife insurance 
poHcies in force increased from less than 70 milhons in 1850 
to 12,513 milhons in 1909; industrial insurance increased 
from twenty milhons in 1880 to 2967 milhons in 1908; 
while a simultaneous increase is recorded in the amounts 
of money invested in building and loan associations. Any 
one who will study the investment advertisements of penny 
newspapers and of five and ten cent magazines, who will 
examine the machinery for the sale of bonds and stocks to 
people of very small incomes ; any one who observes the 
flood of gold which pours from thousands of obscure sources 
to any plausible swindler, — will realize the tremendously 
wide diffusion of wealth in America.^ 

It is claimed by some writers that the decline in individual 
house ownership in the United States proves that the masses 
of the American people are becoming less, and not more, 
prosperous. It is undoubtedly true that to-day a smaller 
proportion of Americans own houses in which they dwell 
than formerly, and this significant fact must be set off against 
other evidences of saving. What the increasing non-owner- 
ship of one's dwelling house proves, however, is not a decline 
in general prosperity, but a change in the unit of investment 
in houses and in the methods of general investment. It is 
no longer an invariable custom even among people of means 
to own their homes ; and so far are we from any direct rela- 
tion between poverty and non-ownership, that it is pre- 
cisely in the poorer rural districts that men mostly own their 
homes, while in the richer cities ownership is less usual. ^ 

^ Note, for instance, the "financial" advertisements appearing in cer- 
tain non-English journals, appealing to the very poorest of our recent 
immigrants. Note also the magnitude of the operations of the little immi- 
grant banks, appealing to the same class. See the statistics of money 
forwarded to Europe by recent immigrants. See the Report of the Com- 
mission on Immigration of the State of New York, Albany, 1909. 

' In Manhattan, which is an island of tenement and apartment houses, 



THE LEVELS OP DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 221 

Even with the increase of non-ownership, the vast sums of 
money invested in individual houses and lots and in build- 
ing and loan associations are another evidence of a wide 
diffusion of property. So too is the wealth invested in hun- 
dreds of thousands of small manufacturing and mercantile 
establishments, ranging in value from a few hundreds to a 
few tens of thousands of dollars. 

It is not to be contended that the increasing prosperity of 
the masses has been universal. Economic stress and distress 
are probably greater to-day than ever before among the free 
populations of America. There is more uncertainty. Our 
slums are greater.^ There are sections of the rural com- 
munity which have been depressed by our economic de- 
velopment, and in certain isolated places there has been a 
marked deterioration in the status and outlook of small 
communities. During the last dozen years, moreover, 
great masses of our working classes, especially among the 
unskilled workers, have been subjected to the pressure of 
increasing prices, and only with great difficulty have they 
secured wage increases superior, or even equal, to the rise 
in the cost of Uving.^ 

it is becoming impossible under present systems of ownership for men 
individually to own their homes. 

1 Our poverty has changed, as has our country, from a rural to an urban 
variety; from a poverty more dependent upon personal incapacity, to 
one more dependent upon economic maladjustments. Our later poverty 
is unrelieved by the presence of free land. To-day when the poor have the 
advantages of city sanitation, free schools, dispensary and hospital service, 
better water, cleaner streets, freer legal advice, free libraries, etc., a larger 
mass of men and women tremble on the verge of crime or dependence than 
ever before. We have established higher standards of success, and those 
who fall below these standards, whether through mischance, lack of train- 
ing, inebriety, or physical or mental weakness, are more miserable than 
they would have been in a cruder society, in which an inefficient man could 
always secure some sort of a job. Despite the rise of the mass of our popu- 
lation, an empty stomach in America is as empty as in Russia or India. 

2 According to the Reports of the Bureau of Labor, based upon the 
records of 4034 establishments in the principal manufacturing and mechan- 



222 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Nor is it claimed that this general rise during the last 
half century, or the rise, where it has occurred, during the 
last ten years, is at all commensurate with the reasonable 
anticipations of the masses of the community. Content with 
what has been gained is the very worst way of retaining what 
has been gained. The question here considered has not been 
whether Americans as a whole should be satisfied with what 

ical industries in the United States, full time weekly wages in 1907 were 
22.4 per cent higher than the average for the years 1890-1899 inclusive, 
while hourly wages were 28.8 per cent higher. During the same period, 
however, the rise in the retail prices of food, weighted according to the 
consumption of the average workingman's family (and based upon data 
taken from the records of 993 retail merchants), was no less than 20.6 per 
cent. In purchasing power, therefore, full time weekly wages rose only 
1.5 per cent from 1890-1899 to 1907, although hourly wages rose 6.8 per 
cent. 

A recent investigation made by the New York (State) Department of 
Labor arrives at somewhat similar results. "The result shown by this 
investigation is that a workingman's living of a given standard cost 22 per 
cent more in 1907 than it did in 1897 in New York City, and averaged 21.5 
per cent more in four other cities, so that 22 per cent may be taken as 
about the proportion of increase in workmen's cost of living at the same 
standard in this State. By reference to the foregoing pages it will be seen 
that the increase in average per diem earnings of Union members in the 
same period was found to be 22.9 per cent. The indication is, therefore, 
that cost of living has risen as much as wage rates in the leading trades. 
But owing to increasing steadiness of employment it was found that the 
half-yearly income of Union workmen in the principal trades had risen 
31.2 per cent in the decade, or considerably more than the cost of living." 

If with these figures we compare, for purely illustrative purposes, the 
crude averages of wages paid to 4,715,023 workers (men, women, and chil- 
dren) in 1900 and to 5,470,321 workers in 1905, we arrive at a somewhat 
similar result, viz. to an increase of 12 per cent in wages during a period 
in which the retail prices of food rose 11.2 per cent. (Summary of Manu- 
factures. Reports of the Bureau of the Census. Department of Com- 
merce and Labor.) 

Similarly among steam railroad employees, while the wages of engine- 
men, firemen, conductors, other trainmen, and machinists (as given by 
the Reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission) increased from 1892 
to 1907 faster, and in some eases much faster, than did the retail prices of 
food during the same period (as given by the Reports of the Bureau of 
Labor), the rise in wages among other classes was but little greater, and 
usually was actually less than the rise in the prices of food. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 223 

has fallen from the table, but whether the increasing pros- 
perity of the general population has, or has not, placed it in 
an economic position where it is better able to take part in 
the work of securing industrial reform and industrial re- 
construction. 

It is not, however, by wealth alone that the masses secure 
industrial supremacy. We need not, it is true, fear either 
in America or elsewhere that the masses will ever attain to 
such a superfluity of possessions as to lame their future 
ambitions. The more a people possess above the mere 
absolute minimum necessary to life, the farther, other 
things being equal, are they removed from that hell of 
lethargic contentment to which moralists during so many 
centuries have consigned the populations that waxed fat. 
But wealth, without education, furnishes no sufficient motive 
power to democratic movements. It is possible that the 
German masses are to-day a more capable democratic group 
than are the English, because the Germans, though perhaps 
poorer, and with fewer political rights, are better educated. 

An increased diffusion of wealth, however, tends towards 
the ultimate securing of education, just as it tends towards 
the acquisition by the masses of political rights and of a 
sense of corporate power and worth. They who laud the 
blessings of poverty (to others) fail to realize the enormous 
development of individuality made possible in modern society 
by an income above the level of existence. A man with a 
thousand dollars a year may have ten times as many educative 
social contacts as has the man with five hundred. A popu- 
lation the majority of whom have a surplus of income above 
necessary expenditure is enormously stronger than a popula- 
tion upon a lower earning fine. 

To-day the mass of Americans, grown in wealth, are a 
power in industry, education, and the state. They are not 
abject, ^'respectfur^ helots. They do not look up to su= 
periors. They themselves, in their collectivity, feel their own 



224 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

superiority. They are aggressive, impolite, and socially 
irreverent. 

There is perhaps a certain harshness to this emerging 
''common man,'' who with a Uttle money and a little knowl- 
edge is beginning to feel his collective importance. He 
knows that he cannot be ignored by trust builder or poHtical 
magnate. His custom must be appealed to ; his prejudices 
must be respected. He can not be ''voted," for his vote 
is worth as much to himself as to the briber. He need not 
vote for a "full dinner pail," but may canvass alternatives. 
He fears neither landlord nor employer. He has his prefer- 
ences in clothes, books, newspapers, schools, and laws, and 
he has the material prosperity to back his choice. 

The diffused wealth of the people is readily transmuted 
into intellectual influence. A poverty-stricken class will 
not have its interests represented by an able periodical press 
because (among other reasons) it cannot pay for it. To 
support a paper or magazine a social class must not only 
pay its pennies in circulation, but must spend its dollars on 
the wares advertised. There can be no better proof of the 
rise in wealth of the great mass than the enormous growth 
of five and ten cent magazines, supporting themselves by 
advertising soaps, razors, and breakfast foods. 

The average man — finding money in his purse — de- 
termines to educate himself. Often this education is de- 
layed a generation and is acquired vicariously by son or 
daughter. Sometimes it is desired because supposed to pay 
in dollars and cents, or in positions of more unquestioned 
"gentility." Behind this, however, there is a far more vital 
and general motive. It is the American instinct for edu- 
cation. 

That instinct is perhaps rather crude, undiscriminating, 
and still intent upon quantity rather than quality. Much 
of our education is superficial and perfunctory, and some is 
absolutely noxious. Our schools have been as anarchic as 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 225 

our factories. We still maintain woefully underpaid and 
undertrained teachers, appointed in some towns and cities 
under a spoils system. We still have miserable schoolrooms, 
antiquated textbooks, and an incredible mass of tenacious 
incompetence and pedagogical perversity. And yet the 
American instinct for education — like so many popular 
instincts — is astoundingly true. It is perhaps our most 
fundamental appreciation of democracy, 

A diffused education, like a diffused prosperity, is neces- 
sary to democracy. In a democracy, the government can 
hardly rise above the intellectual level of the mass. Where, 
as in America, the majority are but little inclined to submit 
their opinions to the judgment of a special intellectual class, 
it is absolutely essential that the mass of the people be in- 
telHgent — politically and otherwise. 

Never before was education so necessary. Even in our 
personal affairs we are overwhelmed with an embarrassment 
of choices and a superfluity of theories. We must decide 
hourly a thousand questions — what to eat and drink and 
wear and buy ; v/hen to sleep ; how to raise the baby ; how 
to furnish the house; how to obtain money; what attitude 
to adopt towards germs. Our new science prevents us from 
falling back upon routine, as our new ethics forbid us to 
depend upon traditions. Even our religion is laicized, and 
most of us choose (and direct) our spiritual advisers, as we 
choose our public servants, newspapers, and patent medicines. 
Our laws against fraud do not quite relieve the intellectual 
strain. Pure food and corporation laws tell us whether there 
is alum in the baking powder or water in the trust, but it 
remains for us to determine whether we will take our baking 
powder and trusts that way. 

Our public problems involve even a greater intellectual 
effort. In no democracy do the intellectually assembled 
people make all decisions. The people decide the broad 
issues, but delegate to legislators and administrators the 



226 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

power to prepare ways and means, reserving, at best, a po- 
tential veto. Despite this latency of democracy, however, 
the people, if ignorant, are powerless, however wide the vote 
or sensitive the political system. They are like a giant with 
occluded brain; a giant beating his own breast. Sover- 
eignty tends to approach the intellectual (as it tends to 
approach the economic) center of gravity of society. If 
knowledge is concentrated at the top, society tends to be- 
come politically — as well as intellectually — top-heavy. 

Wealth means education. Even in countries with free 
and universal education, the ilUterates are, on the whole, 
the very poor, while the better-to-do classes have the higher 
education. Even where tuition is free, the ability to go to 
school depends upon the possession of money to support the 
pupil during these years of preparation. As the wealth of 
the average citizen increases, the school year lengthens, and 
the age at which children may legally leave school is raised. 

Literacy is not learning, and learning is not intelhgence. 
A sanity of judgment is often found among men without 
their letters, while, at the other end of the ladder, recipients 
of learned degrees often suffer through life from intellectual 
stodginess. Our intellectual measurements are arbitrary. 

Nevertheless, the ability to read and write is the best single 
standard of education that we possess, for to-day, more than 
ever before, printer's ink rules the world, and Uteracy is in- 
dispensable to communication. To-day social knowledge 
requires a recourse, not to memory, but to the accumulated 
intellectual stores buried in print. Modern government 
makes literacy essential. The old direct democracy, as 
represented in the town meeting, broke down when the com- 
munity grew so large that a man's voice could not carry. 
A political babel ensued, and there arose a representative 
government, which alwaj^s tended to become a more or less 
unrepresentative government by a special class. To-day, 
when final decisions are again thrown back upon the people, 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 227 

when representatives are tending to become political autom» 
ata, the old problem of direct government, that of making 
a man^s voice carry, reappears. Through the printed word 
one can reach a hundred million Hterate auditors. 

Illiteracy in the United States is not nearly so low as in 
Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, or Great Britain. We 
have still a heavy burden of Negro illiteracy inherited from 
slavery, and to-day a large proportion of our immigrants come 
from ilhterate populations. While no less than one in ten 
(10.7 per cent) of all Americans ten years of age and over ^ 
are unable to write, the proportion of such iUiterates among 
Negroes is 44.5 per cent, among our foreign-born is 12.9 per 
cent, and among our native white population is 4.6 per cent. 
Even this smaller percentage of illiteracy of native whites 
is largely due to the poverty, dispersion of population, and 
special racial problems of the South. Excepting Maine 
(which has a large French Canadian population) no State 
above the old Mason and Dixon line has an illiteracy of 
2 per cent. In eighteen States the illiterates form less than 
1 per cent of the population of the age of ten and over. 

American illiteracy is slowly disappearing. In 1880, 
17.0 per cent of Americans ten years of age and over were un- 
able to write as compared with 10.7 per cent in 1900, and 
during the first decade of the twentieth century the percent- 
age probably fell again. Negro ilhteracy, almost uni- 
versal in 1865, has fallen rapidly. As for the immigrants, 
their children (largely because city dwellers) are more literate 
than the children of native Americans. To-day illiteracy is 
practically a phenomenon of the South, and with the growth 
in Southern wealth and enterprise it is bound to dwindle. 

A literate population may remain ignorant and socially 
impotent.^ Although the abihty to read is more important 

1 Census of 1900. 

2 Much of what has been called a deterioration of our newspapers and 
of our fugitive literature, generally, has in reality been caused, not by a 



228 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

than any single, subsequent step towards the attainment of 
knowledge, mere Uteracy will not suffice for the attainment 
of democracy, to say nothing of the proper working of 
democratic institutions once attained. The intellectual level 
of democratic striving is above the hteracy line, just as the 
economic level is above the poverty Hne. 

Like the economic, so also the intellectual level of demo- 
cratic striving is difficult precisely to determine. It varies 
among different nations and different sections and groups 
of a nation. It rises with the growing complexity of in- 
dustrial and political arrangements and with the increased 
subtlety and finesse of antidemocratic maneuvers. The 
average citizen need not be as cunning as a counterfeiter to 
put a counterfeiter in jail by due process of law. He need 
not be a poHtical economist, constitutional lawyer, and sani • 
tarian combined ('^like Cerberus, three gentlemen in one^O 
to appreciate the social need of such experts, but he must 
be wise enough to care and wise enough to elect men who 
know. The irreducible intellectual minimum, necessary for 
the attainment of democracy, includes some form of social 
consciousness above the cruder manifestations of mere 
jingoism, some measure of group-consciousness, some appre- 
ciation of the importance of public developments, some 
recognition of the necessity of united action, some reahzation 
of the ordinary means of attaining common ends, a tempered 
confidence in leaders, and a capacity for distinguishing larger 
from smaller and more immediate ends. The citizen must 
have a certain social sense and sensitiveness. Wliat is neces- 

deeline in the intelligence of the population but by the increasing literacy 
of the uneducated. Newspapers catering to these more ignorant elements 
of the population have a wide latitude of suggestion and statement, be- 
cause their readers are satisfied with broad appeals to their corporate 
vanity and with general but misdirected denunciations, instead of demand- 
ing an effective expression of their views. Ignorant readers do not secure 
much real representation in public opinion, just as ignorant voters do not 
secure real representation in political action. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 229 

sary is not only the alphabet (that open sesame to the books of 
the world), but also a v/ide, deep popular education through 
the school, the pubHc press, the city, the factory, and a mjo-iad 
of social contacts. 

American education has always encountered tremendous 
difficulties. During the colonial period the settlers were too 
scattered and busy to have much opportunity for study. 
The Revolutionary War dislocated the school system, and 
left the colonists impoverished. The second war with Great 
Britain, the drain of young men to the West, and the general 
dispersal of the population further retarded the educational 
development. As late as 1837 one third of all children in 
Massachusetts were without any school advantages whatso- 
ever, and a large proportion of the remainder attended school 
only two or three months in winter or a few weeks in summer. 

In the South the difficulties were even greater. The 
system of large plantations, the absence of township govern- 
ment, the sparseness of population, the institution of slavery, 
the aristocratic traditions and the parish schools of the 
Church of England, barred the way to the public school for 
almost two centuries. In the West, despite a great zeal for 
education, it was difficult to secure more than its rudiments. 
The little red schoolhouse was often an aspiration rather than 
a pedagogical accomphshment. 

During the last three generations, however, a complete 
revolution has taken place in American instruction, and the 
free public school has been elevated to the first place in the 
democracy. By 1850 public elementary education, sup- 
ported by taxation, had been established with varying 
degrees of completeness in all parts of the country, and its 
subsequent history has been one of rapid development. It is 
impossible here to sketch even in vaguest outline the 
stupendous changes which have taken place in pedagogical 
methods, in the character of textbooks, in the development 
of curricula, in the spirit of the school. Mere external figures 



230 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

are perhaps more convincing. To-day (1909) we have seven- 
teen and a half miUion boys and girls enrolled in the public 
schools, with an average daily attendance of over twelve 
and a half milHons. We have over half a miUion pubUc 
school teachers, on whose salaries $237,000,000 are annually 
spent. Not only does the proportion of enrolled school 
children continually increase; not only do the children 
enrolled attend more frequently and for longer terms, 
but the number of teachers, the salaries of teachers, and 
the sums spent upon pubHc education increase even more 
rapidly.^ 

The zeal, one might almost say the abandon, with which 
America is giving herself up to education is revealed by the 
increasing appropriations for public schools. Especially 
rapid has been the increase in our secondary education, the 
number of pupils in the secondary grades having increased 
124 per cent in the fourteen years 1890 to 1904. The prog- 
ress during the same period both in the quantity and 
quahty of our college and university education has been 
even more startling. According to ]\Ir. Bryce, writing in 
1905, ' 'there has been within these last thirty-five years a 
development of the higher education in the United States 
perhaps without a parallel in the world." - 

Year by year, American education becomes broader, 
deeper, and more differentiated. We are rapidly develop- 
ing special education for special classes, for special ages, for 
special aptitudes. The education of women has taken enor- 

1 While the population between the ages of 5 and 18 increased during the 
period 1870 and 1909 from 12,055,443 to 24,239,820, or 101.1 per cent, the 
number of pupils enrolled in the public schools increased 154.8 per cent 
(6,871,522 to 17,506,175) and the average daily attendance increased 
211.1 per cent (4,077,347 to 12,684,837). During the same period the 
number of teachers increased 152.4 per cent (200,515 to 506,040) ; the 
salaries of superintendents and teachers increased over sixfold ($37,832,566 
to $237,013,913) ; and the total expenditure for the public schools also in- 
creased over sixfold ($63,396,666 to $401,397,747). 

2 ''America Revisited," The Outlook, March, 1905. 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 231 

mous steps forward. Our professional schools, although 
many of them are still archaic and vicious, are being re- 
formed. Our kindergartens, our manual training schools, 
etc., are enormously in advance of anything in America a 
generation ago. 

Even more stupendous has been the. effect of our recent 
library development upon the intellectual development of 
the broad masses of the people. Nowhere during the last 
twenty years has there been a development of the public 
library on anything approaching the American scale. The 
strengthening alliance between schools and public libraries, 
the deposit of book collections in schools, the widespread 
system of traveling Hbraries, the creation of special reading 
rooms for children, the specialization of hbraries for the 
bhnd and other groups, the growing list of private benefac- 
tions to libraries, and the enormous extension in the use of 
hbraries have been parts of a development which has 
brought books of all kinds to the masses of the people. Si- 
multaneously there has been so stupendous a growth of the 
newspaper ^ and the magazine, and so keen a stimulation to 
general reading, that to-day one finds everjrwhere in the 
cities that men are much — if not well — informed. There 
was never a time in the history of the world when so many 
minds, uniting to form pubhc opinion, were so stirred. 

The mind of the nation is becoming not only more inquisi- 
tive into all things, but inteUigence is spreading out over an 
ever wider area. The newspaper and the magazine, aided 
by the rural free deUvery, now invade country districts, 

1 In 1775 there was not a single daily paper published in the colonies ; 
by 1820 there were 27 dailies, with an annual circulation of 22,321,000. By 
1828 this circulation had trebled ; by 1871 it had increased 67 fold to the 
enormous total of 1,500,000,000 copies. Since then the development has 
been even more remarkable. In 1907-1908 there were published in the 
United States and Canada 22,487 periodicals (of which 21,320 were pub- 
lished in the United States). Of these 22,487 periodicals, 16,087 were 
weekly, 2681 monthly, 2494 daily, 269 semimonthly, 6lS semiweeMy, 
190 quarterly, 49 biweekly ; 57 triweekly, and 73 bimonthly. 



232 •THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

hitherto inaccessible. Everywhere the Unks of thought are 
drawn closer. The mails, the telegraph, and the telephone 
spread inteUigence with enormous rapidity. The statistics 
of the post office indicate the wide spread of intelUgence 
through letters and newspapers. During the forty years 
ending in 1910, the population, according to the census 
statistics, increased 139 per cent, while the number of 
ordinary postage stamps issued increased 1806 per cent. 
The telegraph development, though rapid, has been 
stunted by the high rates for messages, but an enormous 
expansion of telephone communication is even now taking 

r place. ^ 
In the city, as in the country, a pubHc opinion based upon 
many sources of information is steadily forming. Here the 
means of communication have been so perfected that the 
danger lies not in an under- but almost in an overstimula- 
tion of the mind. Men, separated by only a few blocks or a 
few miles, are united by the telephone and the street car. 
The spirit of the city is association, and in the growing cities 
of America are found the nuclei of vast associative efforts 
with the object of poUtical, social, and industrial better- 
ment. In the city, where a man may not know his neighbor, 
most men can find their like-minded fellows, and here — even 
more than in the country districts — is being created that 
associative and cooperative intelHgence, pubhc opinion. 
This growing inteUigence of the American masses,^ Uke 

1 From January 1, 1904, to January 1, 1910, the number of exchanges 
and branch offices of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 
and of the operating companies associated with it, increased from 3740 to 
4968 ; the number of subscribers increased from 1,525,167 to 3,588,247 or 
111 per cent, the number of daily exchange connections from 9,876,402 to 
19,925,194 or 101.7 per cent, while the population of the country increased 
less than 13 per cent. 

^ Twenty years ago, Mr. Bryce said ("American Commonwealth," 
Vol. II, pp. 867-869) : "Nowhere in the world is there growing up suoh a 
vast multitude of intelligent, cultivated, and curious readers. It is true 
that of the whole population a majority of the men read little but news- 



THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC STRIVING 233 

their growing wealth and income, is a vital fact in the achieve- 
ment of political and industrial democracy. Just as the 
feudal regime began to totter when the bullet of the common 
soldier pierced the steel armor of the knight, so our regime of 
pecuniary and industrial privilege begins to crumble when its 
pretensions are riddled by the questions of the straight- 
thinking masses. The constantly greater drawing upon new 
and old agencies of education, from the trade union to the 
university,, and from the Grange to the moving picture ; the 
ever widening circle of influence of our education ; in short, 
our gradual creation of an intellectual republic, while a conse- 
quence of our more diffused wealth, is in turn a cause of it. 
More money for the people means more education, and more 
education means more money. 

To-day the American people are gradually attaining a wide 
diffusion of wealth and intelligence. They have already at- 
tained formal political rights.^ There is growing up an 
enormous mass of people who not only possess the vote, but 
also sufficient money and sufficient intelligence not to be 
coerced or too often deluded. This mass of citizens, if they 
can unite, should be able to secure control of government and 
of industry and to reconstitute America according to the 
wishes of the majority. 

The question remains, '^Can they unite ?^' Have they 
interests in common ? Are they part of an organic whole ? 

papers, and many of the women little but novels. Yet there remains a 
number to be counted by millions, who enjoy and are moved by the higher 
products of thought and imagination ; and it must be that as this number 
continues to grow, each generation rising somewhat above the level of its 
predecessors, history and science, and even poetry, will exert a power such 
as they have never yet exerted over the masses of any country." 

1 As the economic level of democratic striving lies above the poverty 
line, and the intellectual level lies above the literacy line, so the political 
level runs above the suffrage line. The ballot is a key which opens all 
political closets, but it is only a key — useless if unused. Besides the right 
and habit of voting, the average citizen must be cognizant of some of the 
present limitations and some of the future potentialities of the ballot. 



I' 



234 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

A rope of sand, though it be composed of ninety million 
or of ninety quadrilhon grains, is but a rope of sand. Is 
there an internal cohesion of the people? Is there a soU- 
darity ? Is there a mass to oppose to the privileges and pre- 
tensions of a class ? 



.41 



CHAPTER XV 

THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 

THE solidarity of the masses above the three levels of 
democratic striving may not be arbitrarily assumed. 
Just as the visible lands above sea level differ from the sub- 
merged lands and yet equally differ among each other in alti- 
tude, latitude, and structure, so the emerged masses, though 
on a different plane from the submerged, are split into classes, 
groups, and sub-groups by the action of race, reUgion, tradi- 
tion, occupation, and income. 

This very broadness and vagueness of the democratic 
masses, of the masses above the level of democratic striving, 
is of the very essence of the problem. It is easy, by a 
logical tour de force, to divide society into two simple, an- 
tagonistic groups, each of which is supposed to be united by a 
single quality or condition and to be animated by a single 
purpose. Such a doctrinaire alignment of social classes, an 
ahgnment Hke that between proletariat and non-proletariat, 
or between the propertied and the absolutely unpropertied, 
has the advantage of clearness and Hteralness, but, inter- 
preted clearly and hterally, it does not represent actual 
divisions in society. 

The more complex society is (and it becomes more complex 
yearly), the greater is the difficulty in dividing the commu- 
nity into two mutually exclusive groups, with clear-cut, antag- 
onistic philosophies. The ideals of men tend more or less 
to coincide with their industrial interests, but the result is 
affected by prejudices, antipathies, sympathies, and tradi- 
tions ; and prepossession is nine points of belief. Nor are 
industrial interests themselves so simple or easily classifi- 

235 



236 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

able. Special group interests conflict with general group 
interests, as when the locomotive engineer sides with the 
railroad stockholder against the Negro or Italian track- 
layer. Subsidiary economic interests affect the result, as 
when the workingman is also a small investor or even a direct 
employer of other men's labor. Family bonds create cross- 
Hnes of interest. The stone mason's son may be traveUng 
salesman for a trust ; the daughter of a grocer may be a 
school-teacher or milliner; the brother of an obsequious 
butler may be a walking delegate, a village minister, a bucket- 
shop keeper, a tenant farmer, or a small pharmacist. 

Here, as elsewhere in sociology, we must sacrifice a ficti- 
tious simplicity to the greater complexity and vagueness of 
the truth. The real facts of our economic hfe are too be- 
wilderingly intricate to be covered exactly by any rigid 
formula, however necessary such formulae may be. In de- 
picting social cleavages we may profitably use with mental 
reservations such facile current phrases as 'Hhe pubHc,'* 
^Hhe common people." But who are 'Hhe common people," 
as distinguished from other members of society ? It is easy 
to think abstractly of ^Hhe masses" and ^'the classes" as 
two distinct, antagonistic groups. When, however, we re- 
view the actual people in our block, city, or township, we 
encounter insuperable difficulties of classification. Take the 
milkman, the college professor, the locomotive engineer, 
the dentist, the eight hundred-dollar-a-year minister, the 
briefless attorney, the saloon keeper, the manufacturer of 
carpets, the importer of dolls, the semi-successful novehst, 
the chorus girl, the little pawnbroker, the truck-gardener, 
the city policeman, the penniless pickpocket, the farmer 
with a two-thousand dollar farm, the sweated employer of 
sweatshop labor, the bricklayer with one thousand dollars 
in the bank, the life insurance general agent, the four-thou- 
sand dollar-a^year designer for a cloak factory, the buyer for 
a big department store, — take these, and determine in each 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 237 

case whether the man or woman belongs to the masses or to 
the classes. Anticipate, without further knowledge, how the 
man will ''Hne up" for or against democratic institutions. 
Take the farmer alone. How big a farm or how big a mort- 
gage puts a man in one group or the other ? 

We must apply our standards modestly. Only roughly 
and inaccurately can we determine in practice what elements 
in the population constitute the democratic masses, the im- 
pelling force of democracy. We cannot designate individuals, 
just as in statistics, though we can predict how many men 
and maids will marry next year, we cannot foretell whether 
John Doe or Jane Roe will marry. Any classification will 
involve millions of exceptions, and groups, favoring certain 
extensions of democracy, will be opposed to other extensions. 

It is only when we attempt to apply the levels of democratic 
striving to oiu* extremely differentiated population that we 
reahze the vastness of the social spaces which separate 
groups which must be united in the bonds of solidarity. 
From the point of view of wealth the bulk of the democratic 
mass (bearing in mind the multitude of exceptions) do not 
stand either at the top or at the very bottom of Fortune's 
ladder. This mass excludes a majority of our business princes 
with dependents and hangers-on, as well as other men, who 
have no affihation with the plutocracy other than a common 
lawlessness. The democratic mass also excludes a majority 
of men below the poverty hne, the abjectly poor, who are 
also largely the defectives, dependents, delinquents, the 
ilHterate, and the disfranchised. The democratic mass 
represents a residue of the population, after a majority of 
the very rich and of the abjectly poor have been drawn off. 
This residue seems to constitute or to be about to constitute a 
vast majority. If in the total absence of statistics or even of 
a statistical classification which would be apphcable, we 
arbitrarily estimate at twenty milUons the people who are 
debarred through excessive wealth or excessive poverty, 



238 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ignorance, or political impotence from effectively willing 
a large measure of democratic reorganization, there would still 
remain of our ninety millions of people some seventy mil- 
lions who may perhaps have the material, intellectual, and 
political means to strive for the attainment of a democratic 
ci\dUzation, and who have a perceivable interest in its 
achievement. 

It is from the very conditions of the problem impossible 
to say just what proportion of these assumed seventy mil- 
lions ^ are actively interested in democratic reform generally, 
or in any specific reform. For the most part, the active pro- 
ponents or opponents of any change, industrial, poHtical, or 
social, are extremely few, and the great mass simply have 
their thumbs up or down. Many are counted who have not 
decided, and many vote who do not know what the voting is 
about. 

Nevertheless, bearing still in mind the multitude of ex- 
ceptions, we may speak of a potentially democratic mass, 
which though possessed of common attributes (some earning 
power, some intellectual ability, and some power to affect 
elections), is still a highly heterogeneous group of groups. 
This mass probably includes a majority of farmers and of 
farm laborers, especially in the more prosperous sections of 
the country. It includes a majority of men and women in 
professional service (actors, architects, designers, artists, 
clergymen, dentists, electricians, engineers, lawyers, journal- 
ists, authors, government officials, physicians, surgeons, 
teachers, and professors). It includes the majority of skilled 
workmen in all trades and a large proportion of unskilled 
men, employed with reasonable regularity. It includes 
many specialized domestic servants. It includes the major- 

^ To avoid misunderstandings, I wish to disclaim any even approximate 
accuracy for this number, which depends naturally upon the interpretation 
gfiven to inevitably loose terms. What I wish by the somewhat arbitrary 
figure to emphasize is the largeness and looseness of the groups to be ap- 
pealed to in any fundamental democratic movement. 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 239 

ity of men in all grades of the railroad service, except com- 
mon laborers, and an unknown proportion of the latter. It 
includes a majority of merchants and dealers, retail and whole- 
sale; a majority of agents and brokers, bookkeepers, ac- 
countants, clerks, and stenographers, and a doubtful propor- 
tion of hucksters and peddlers. In certain trades it includes 
a larger proportion of workers than in others. The propor- 
tion is larger in certain States, cities, or wards than in others. 
The whole mass is fluctuating, ill-defined, composite, hetero- 
geneous. But it is precisely of this large, not exactly defin- 
able, section that we speak ; a section which may include a 
prosperous Montana farmer, a Baltimore grocer, a Maine 
lumberjack, a San Francisco bricklayer, an Atlanta cotton 
factor, a Schenectady drill-hand, a saving Polish miner in 
Wilkes-Barre, a Negro lawyer in Philadelphia, a Jewish 
peddler in San Antonio, and an Irish or a German saloon 
keeper in New York. This composite, with thousands of 
subtypes, is the American common people, the fount of the 
confused American public opinion, the potentially directive 
force of American Hfe. 

But the question which presented itself at the beginning 
presents itself anew and with redoubled force. ^^Can these \ 
potentially democratic masses unite ? '^ Will the Maine lum- | 
berjack, the Negro lawyer, the German saloon keeper, the I 
Montana farmer — men of different race, religion, and Ian- \ 
guage ; of different pohtical traditions, of different economic | 
status, of different social outlook, — will these think ahke 
and vote together ? Can a group with widely diverse inter- 
ests so compromise conflicting claims within the group as to 
unite an effective majority, and thus compel a permanent 
victory ? 

This task of compromising conflicting interests, and con- 
flicting sentiments and outlooks, is the more difficult because 
of our manifold differences of race, color, language, religion, 
class, and local environment. America is the world's melt- 



240 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

ing pot, but the melting is not over. Unification is not com- 
plete. The striking Hungarian coal miner, who is a white 
man, a Catholic, and an immigrant, hates a native, Protestant, 
Negro strikebreaker for a wide variety of reasons. The con- 
stitution and by-laws of one of our American trade-unions is 
printed in nineteen languages. In many of our cities the at- 
tempts to solve the allied problems of Sunday liquor-seUing 
and of police corruption are frustrated by a deadlock of senti- 
ment between two well-intentioned, but opposed, racial 
sections of the community. The Negro problem still over- 
rides all other problems in the South, and many Southern 
democrats would look askance upon any project of demo- 
cratic reform which seemed even remotely to threaten the 
political, industrial, or social supremacy of the white race. 
The creation of a democratic solidarity is halted by this mul- 
tiplicity of cleavages. 

In some respects the democratic masses are as much di- 
vided among themselves as are the distracted races of the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the task of creating a soli- 
darity and of formulating a democratic program without 
excessive internal friction is at times comparable in difficulty 
with the delicate statesmanship which holds together, in a 
tolerably successful union, Germans, Magyars, Bohemians, 
Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Servians, Italians, Roumanians, 
and Croats. The democratic masses are not uniform 
automata with a tabula rasa for a brain, but men of the widest- 
varying prepossessions and the most divided allegiances. It 
is essential at all times to unite, in permanent bonds of union, 
a majority of these unlike-minded men. 

In other respects Americans are more inclined to an ulti- 
mate solidarity than are the peoples of certain European 
lands. Our various languages, unlike those of Switzerland 
and of Austro-Hungary, tend to disappear in the all-absorb- 
ing English tongue. Oiu" religious differences are not ex- 
acerbated by rehgious intolerance, and are mollified by a 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 241 

separation of state and church. We have no aristocratic 
traditions, and we were, until recently at least, what one 
might style a middle-class nation ; a nation, the majority of 
which enjoyed an earning power and possessed an outlook 
upon life comparable to those of the middle classes of the lead- 
ing European nations. While our color antagonism does not 
seem to abate, while the cleavage of classes maintains itself 
with the growth of ever larger factory populations, there are 
gradually discovered bases upon which a partial sohdarity of I 
the people may be erected. 

No absolute solidarity, moreover, is necessary nor, for that 
matter, conceivable. We often hear the word sohdarity 
used in a sense as absolute as that of the terms of physical 
science, and we might almost be led to believe that a class 
attains solidarity, as a liquid attains solidity, at a definite, 
predetermined social temperature. But sohdarity, though 
the word is used so trippingly, is itself a distractingly com- 
plex conception. Whether or not men can unite depends 
upon the issue upon which they are supposed to unite. 
There is a certain broad religious solidarity among the Chris- 
tians of the world, but among them are also the sharpest 
of religious cleavages. Our economic congregations are 
equally split up into sects. The class-consciousness of the 
socialists does not preserve them from internal conflicts 
over principles and pohcies; and as for the so-called class- 
conscious capitalists — their solidarity is that of Yahoos. 
The solidarity of trade-unionists, although indisputable, 
does not avert jurisdictional disputes. Solidarity strength- 
ens as the group narrows, and weakens as the group widens. 
Sohdarity strengthens as the issue narrows, and weakens as 
the issue widens. Solidarity is effected more easily for ideals 
than for the means to attain those ideals, more easily for the 
general goal than for the specific plan. Solidarity is not a 
thing constant and invariable. It is a resultant of attracting 
and repeUing forces. It is a fluctuating quahty depending 



242 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Upon fundamental causes and upon transient phenomena. 
Solidarity exists, and its existence is the vital fact of social 
life, but nowhere in the world is there an absolute solidarity, 
or an absolute lack of solidarity. Sohdarity grows and de- 
clines, flows and ebbs, becomes greater and smaller. Sohdar- 
ity is relative, not absolute. 

Were the solidarity of the plutocracy greater than it is, 
that of the democracy would needs also be greater. In 
the matter of solidarity, the plutocracy has the dual advan- 
tage of being small and rich. Men unite more easily in a 
parlor than in an amphitheater, and money remains one of 
the most powerful of social cements. And yet the plutocracy 
is not, and never has been, a complete unit. 

There are to-day cross-lines of interest in the plutocracy 
which make some of its constituent groups at most lukewarm 
adherents of rival groups. There is never a perfect '' com- 
munity of interest," never a final division of the field, never 
a stable equihbrium in our gigantic, dynamic national busi- 
ness. Controllers of hundreds of miUions still fight with ope 
another as two men may fight for a job. It was the mutual 
jealousy of two financial interests which let the cat out of the 
insurance bag, and stolen goods have more than once been 
returned by financial Titans who failed to get their share of 
the ^^swag." The plutocracy, like the democracy, is in pro- 
cess of becoming one. It is not yet one. 

As wealth accumulates, moreover, a cleavage of sentiment 
widens between the men who are getting rich and the men 
who ai^e rich. The old Cincinnati distinction between the 
''stick-'ems" (the actual pork-packers) and the rich ^^stuck- 
'ems" is to-day reflected in the difference between the retired 
millionaires of New York and the millionaires, in process or 
hope, of Cleveland, Portland, Los Angeles, or Denver. The 
gilt-edged millionaire bondholder of a standard railroad has 
only a partial sympathy with timber thieves, though his 
own fortune may have originated a few generations ago in 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 243 

railroad-wrecking or the slave and Jamaica rum trade ; while 
the cultured descendants of cotton manufacturers resent 
the advent into their society of the man who has made his 
"pile" in the recent buying or selHng of franchises. Once 
wealth is sanctified by hoary age — and in this mellowing 
process a score of years in America exceeds a cycle of Cathay 
— it tends to turn quite naturally against new and evil ways 
of wealth getting, the expedients of prospective social climb- 
ers. The old wealth is not a loyal ally in the battle for the 
plutocracy ; it inclines, if not to democratic, at least to mildly 
reformatory, programs. The wealth of New York City — 
that final storage-house of certificates of ownership — 
trickles by the tens of millions into works of social progress. 
The "stuck-' ems" dull the edge of their animosity against 
democratic programs ; the battle between the plutocracy and 
the democracy, which furiously rages in the cities where 
wealth is being actually fought for, becomes somewhat 
gentler in those cities where bodies of accumulated wealth 
exercise a moderating influence. Inheritance works in the 
same direction. Once wealth is separated from its original 
accumulator, it slackens its advocacy of its method of 
accumulation. The plutocracy ceases to be a unit in de- 
fense.^ 

Nor is the democracy, though many-minded, absolutely 

1 When we consider not gi-oups but individuals, the solidarity of the 
plutocracy is even less perfect. In the broadest sense of the word, the 
recruiting ground of the democratic army is the entire population. No 
man is too rich or too poor, too good or too bad, to be absolutely and for- 
ever immune from this moral conscription. Although the main body of 
the democratic army comes (and will doubtless continue to come) from 
men intelligent enough to perceive their benefit (either as members of their 
group or as members of society) from proposed democratic changes, still 
there are always thousands of men and women who, though they profit 
by present inequalities and maladjustments, are opposed to their continu- 
ance. Ultra-wealthy men, taken to our financial mountain tops and shown 
the kingdoms of the world, cannot always be bribed to silence or conniv- 
ance, however large their share of the social surplus. Occasionally a rich 
young man sells all that he has and becomes an agitator. 



244 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

without unity. The various democratic groups have two 
chief elements of solidarity: a common antagonism to the 
plutocracy, and a common interest in the social surplus. 

In intercourse among social groups, as in intercourse 
among men, a common antagonism may be the beginning of 
a mutual understanding. Groups repelling the same group 
tend to attract each other. 

The plutocracy is the chief objective of our social agitation. 
It, and it alone, unites in opposition factory workers, farm- 
ers, shopkeepers, professional men. The plutocracy creates 
between the few and the many a cleavage which for the 
time being obscures all other divisions.^ 

Not all our antagonism to the plutocracy is based upon an 
intelligent study of causes. Much of it is merely an instinc- 
tive anger, not free from considerations on a low plane. Much 
is exaggerated, wrong-headed, puerile, even insincere. Envy, 
hatred, and uncharitableness walk arm in arm with a flaming 
altruism. Our antipathy is a curious compound of good and 
evil motives, of wisdom and ignorance. But society is not 
squeamish in its selection of methods ; and as for wisdom, 
social groups, like individuals, allege the most foolish of 
reasons for the sanest of actions. 

The most curious factor in this antagonism is that an in- 
creasing bitterness is felt by a majority which is not worse 
but better off than before. This majority suffers not an 
absolute decline but a relatively slower growth. It objects 
that the plutocracy grows too fast ; that in growing so rapidly 
it squeezes its growing neighbors. Growth is right and 
proper, but there is, it is alleged, a rate of growth which is 
positively immoral." 

1 There would to-day be a sharper antagonism between country and 
city over the prices of meat but for the Meat Trust, which, not unprofitably, 
acts as a buffer. 

* This attitude of the people is not unhke that of the dormouse in 
"Alice in Wonderland." 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 245 

It is urged against the plutocracy that, because of its 
growth, it subjects an increasing number of people to a pres- 
sure to which they are becoming increasingly sensitive. 

This pressure is not for the most part the pang of hunger. 
Our society is too well padded for that. It is a subtler pres- 
sure on a higher economic plane. In the plutocratic edifice 
the ceiling is too low for the growing people. 

To a considerable extent the plutocracy is hated not for 
what it does, but for what it is. Though there have been 
enough well-attested cases of tax-dodging, bribing, franchise- 
grabbing, and other sins of great corporations, the popular 
antagonism lies deeper than a condemnation of individual 
offenses. More and more the growing opposition attaches 
itself to ^^good'^ as well as ''bad trusts, '' to the system which 
produces trusts, and to the conditions which produce the 
system, rather than to the men, good and bad, who are more 
or less fortuitously the representatives of the trust. After 
all, though some of our wisest political morahsts proclaim 
that ''sin is always personal,'' there exist, in many indus- 
tries, conditions (hitherto permitted by us) which force men 
in certain positions either to sin or to surrender their places 
to men who will. In such cases it is the system that sins, or 
it is we who sin, rather than the individual who has been 
bribed by a high salary to risk a jail sentence. The Amer- 
ican people are looking beyond the titular offender in the 
search for a greater anonymous culprit. 

From a more personal point of view, it is the mere existence 
of a plutocracy, the mere "being'' of our wealthy contempo- 
raries, that is the main offense. Our over-moneyed neigh- 
bors cause a relative deflation of our personalities. Of 
course, in the consumption of wealth, as in its production, 
there exist "non-competitive groups," and a two-thousand- 
doUar-a-year man need not spend like a Gould or a Gug- 
genheim. Everywhere, however, we meet the million- 
aire's good and evil works, and we seem to resent the one 



246 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

as much as the other. Our jogging horses are passed by 
their high-power automobiles. We are obUged to take their 
dust.' 

By setting the pace for a frantic competitive consumption, 
our infinite gradations in wealth (with which gradations 
the plutocracy is inevitably associated) increase the general 
social friction and produce an acute social irritation. There 
was ostentatious spending before the plutocratic period, as 
there will be after, for display is an inveterate form of indi- 
viduation, older than humanity. Our plutocracy, however, 
intent upon socially isolating itself and possessing no title 
to precedence other than the visible possession of money, 
makes of this competitive consumption a perennial handicap- 
race of spenders. We are developing new types of desti- 
tutes — the automobileless, the yachtless, the Newport- 
cottageless. The subtlest of luxuries become necessities, 
and their loss is bitterly resented. The discontent of to-day 
reaches very high in the social scale. 

This competitive consumption is so graduated that it 
reaches down from group to group, and does much to de- 
civiHze our whole society. Not only do multimiUionaires 
^'buy away" the best commodities and services in the market 
(from January strawberries to French chauffeurs) ; not only 
do they, with their high tips and loose purses, ''spoil Europe " 
(for groups, which are trjdng to ''spoil Europe" for other 
groups, and so ad infinitum), but they start up similar, if 
more modest, ostentations on the social planes below. Every- 
where people are buying articles which have the sole merit of 
being inimitable — but which are nevertheless imitated. 
Everywhere there is a war between "the observed" and "the 
observers," a war as ceaseless and as costly as that between 

* The automobile, although in process of democratization, seems in a 
curious way typical of our plutocracy. This is perhaps because of its 
speed, power, noise, and dust ; its clumsy ease, its shrieking modernity, 
its essential practicality, its calm assumption of the middle of the road. 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 247 

armor plate and ordnance.^ Extravagance becomes a 
cult; reasoned expenditure, an oddity; and industries 
thrive in useless ways, while the nation wastes more in a 
contest of spenders than would pay for the proper education 
of milhons of Americans. The end of it all is vexation of 
spirit. The sheer juxtaposition of overdressed and under- 
clad, of elegant and genteelly shabby, give to envy, empti- 
ness, and a merely comparative poverty the force of a revo- 
lutionary impulse. 

The plutocracy is called to account for many evil or 
uncomfortable conditions which might more fairly be 
attributed to our increasing population, our greater so- 
cial density, and our more tightly interwoven industry. 

But the plutocracy — not without a certain show of 
right — is held to blame. The plutocracy is an expanding 
force against which we strike. It is a social obstacle which 
cannot but be hated by men who have been used only 
to natural obstacles. Moreover, the plutocracy is held 
responsible for our economic qualms, because it is the visi- 
bly directive force of society. It cannot escape the lia- 
bility of leadership. 

For this reason the plutocracy is charged with having 
ended our old-time equality. In actual fact we always had 
less equahty than we now Hke to beheve, and, in any case, 
the plutocracy is itself but the result of an economic evo- 
lution which independently produced our present inequali- 
ties. Our industrial development (of which the trust is 
but one phase) has been towards a sharpening of the angle 
of progression. Our eminences have become higher and 
more dazzhng; the goal has been raised and narrowed. 
Although lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, and pro- 
fessional men generally, make larger salaries than ever 

1 It was less a paradox than a social disseotion when an Amerfoan wit 
praised a certain New York hotel because it gave **exclusiveness" to the 



248 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

before, the earning of one hundred thousand dollars a year 
by one lawyer impoverishes by comparison the thousands 
of lawyers who scrape along on a thousand a year. The 
widening of the competitive field has widened the varia- 
tion and has sharpened the contrast between success and 
failure, with a resulting inequahty and discontent. 

Americans have never worshiped a rigid equahty of 
wealth. They have always been willing to condone any 
inequality which was measurable, which could be overcome 
in a lifetime, which represented, or might represent, superior 
attainments of the wealthier. But present inequaUties 
differ so widely in degree from our old inequaUties as to 
differ in kind. The rich are so rich that they can hardly 
help growing richer. A multimilUonaire may be dissipated, 
lazy, imbecile, spendthrift, and yet automatically he gains 
more in a month than the average man earns in a hfetime. 
The very wealthy, irrespective of brains or manners, are 
sought out in business and social intercourse. They are 
able to grant favors, to wreak vengeance, to compel the 
adherence of other men They can even afford to have 
their crimes committed for them. 

The forces which give rise to the plutocracy also give 
rise to a certain circumscription of industrial opportunity. 
The enterprising, individualistic American resents his 
inability to go into the steel or oil business ^'for himself,^' 
even though he may be better off as an employee of the 
Steel Corporation or the Standard Oil Company. Trades- 
men attribute all their economic ills to department stores, 
mail-order houses, and big trusts. The small retailer is per- 
haps less injured by the competition of department stores 
than by the natural overcrowding of his business. If the 
United Cigar Stores were to retire from the retail tobacco 
business, their place would be immediately taken by thou- 
sands of new competitors, and the average cigar dealer 
would be but little better off, except as to his chance of 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 249 

ultimately going to the top. The retail tobacconist has 
suffered a reduction less in income than in outlook. His 
horizon has been narrowed. He may have as much money 
in the cash drawer, but he is poorer in hopes. The result- 
ing discontent is leveled against the plutocracy, the visible 
beneficiary of the economic trend. 

Thus the plutocracy is more and more opposed by an 1 
ever larger number of social groups and individuals, not 
only for what it does and for what it is, but for the deeper 
economic tendencies which it represents. Different men 
are arrayed against the plutocracy for different reasons. 
While, however, such common hostility is a sufficient 
stimulus to an aggressive campaign, it is not a basis broad 
enough for a constructive program. Unless the opponents 
of the plutocracy have some common positive aim, their 
antagonism will dissipate itself in abortive assaults and 
waste heat, without permanent influence upon social con- | 
ditions. | 

There exists, however, such a common aim. This aim, \ 
which holds together the opponents of an intrenched plu- j 
tocracy, is the attainment of a common share in the con- I 
quered continent, in the material and moral accumulations l 
of a century. When the trust raises prices, obtains valu- I 
able franchises or public lands, escapes taxation, secures 
bounties, lowers wages, evades factory laws, or makes other 
profitable maneuvers, it is diverting a part of the social sur- 
plus from the general community to itself. The public pays 
the higher prices, loses the franchises or lands, pays higher 
taxes, suffers in wages (and pays for the ill effects of low 
wages), and generally makes up dollar for dollar for all such 
gains. In all these things the people have a perceivable in- 
terest. The great mass is injured in its capacity of wage 
earner, salary earner, taxpayer and consumer. 

Of these capacities that of the consumer is the most 
universal, since even those who do not earn wages or pay 



250 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

direct taxes consume commodities. In America to-day the 
miifying economic force, about which a majority, hostile 
to the plutocracy, is forming, is the common interest 
of the citizen as a consumer of wealth, and incidentally 
as an owner of (imdivided) national possessions. The 
producer (who is only the consumer in another r61e) 
is highly differentiated. He is banker, lawyer, soldier, 
tailor, farmer, shoeblack, messenger boy. He is capitaUst, 
workman, money lender, money borrower, urban worker, 
rural worker. The consumer, on the other hand, is imdif- 
ferentiated. All men, women, and children who buy shoes 
(except only the shoe manufacturer) are interested in cheap 
good shoes. The consumers of most articles are over- 
whelmingly superior in numbers to the producers. 

Despite this overwhelming superiority in numbers, the 
consumer, finding it difficult to organize, has often been 
worsted in industrial battles. In our century-long tariff 
contests, a million inaudible consumers have often counted 
less than has a petty industry in a remote district. The 
consumer thought of himself as a producer, and he united 
only with men of his own productive group. For a time 
there was a certain reason for such an alignment. It was 
a period of falHng prices, of severe competition, in which the 
whole organization of industry favored the consumer. In 
fact, the unorganized and ruthless consumer was blamed — 
and rightly blamed (as he is still rightly blamed to-day) 
— for many of the evils of industry. The curse of the sweat- 
shop and of the starving seamstress, sewing by candle- 
hght, was fairly brought to the doors of the bargain-hunt- 
ing housewife. The consumer, though acting singly, felt 
himself secure. 

Even when prices began to rise, consumers remained 
quiescent. There was greater difficulty in resisting price 
advances, because the loss to each individual from each 
increase was so infinitesimal. The reverse of the over- 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 251 

whelming numbers of the consumers was the small individ- 
ual interest of each in each transaction. Wages affected a 
man far more sensibly than did prices. If a motorman's 
wages were reduced one cent an hour he might lose thirty 
dollars a year; a rise of ten cents in the price of shoes, 
on the other hand, meant a loss of, at most, two dollars 
a year. A man could not spend his lifetime fighting ten- 
cent-increases. The cure for high prices was high wages. 
As prices continue to rise, however, as a result (among 
other causes ^) of our gradually entering into a monopoly 
period, a new insistence is laid upon the rights of the con- 
sumer, and political unity is based upon him. Where 
formerly production seemed to be the sole governing eco- 
nomic fact of a man's life, to-day many producers have 
no direct interest in their product. It is a very attenuated 
interest which the Polish slag-worker has in the duty on 
steel billets, but the Polish slag-worker and the Boston 
salesgirl and the Oshkosh lawyer have a similar interest 
(and a common cause of discontent) as consumers of the 
national wealth. The universality of the rise of prices has 
begun to affect the consumer as though he were attacked 
by a million gnats. The chief offense of the trust becomes 
its capacity to injure the consumer. Therefore the con- 
sumer, disinterred from his grave, reappears in the poUti- 
cal arena as the '^common man," the ^^ plain people," the 
"strap-hanger," "the man on the street," "the taxpayer," 
the "ultimate consumer." ^ Men who voted as producers 
are now voting as consumers. 

* Among these other causes are the increasing pressure of our population 
upon our available natural resources, the increased cheapness of gold and, 
in individual cases, a better quality of goods, a more frequent and quicker 
delivery under more difficult conditions, and generally a better service re= 
quired by more exigent consumers. 

' It is significant that none of these phrases gives any inkling as to the 
man's trade, calling, or position in the world of production, whether farmer 
»r factory hand, employer or employed. 



252 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

We are now beginning to appeal to the "ultimate con- 
sumer/' the man who actually eats, wears, or uses the arti- 
cle. A generation ago we legislated for the penultimate 
shopkeeper, or the ante-penultimate manufacturer. Our 
contest for railroad rate regulation was formerly waged 
in the interest of the producer or shipper, and not primarily 
in the interest of the consumer. The rates in question were 
freight, not passenger, rates,^ and the great problem was 
not so much low freight rates (which more immediately 
benefited the consumer) as equal freight rates, in which 
the competing manufacturer was primarily interested.^ 

It is difficult for the consumer to act industrially in con- 
cert. The "rent strikes" on the East Side of New York 
have always been unsuccessful. The meat strikes have 
been equally without result. The work of the Consumers' 
Leagues has been chiefly a humanitarian labor for the bene- 
fit of producers, and we have never successfully developed 
in America great cooperative associations of workingmen 
consumers, like those of England, Belgium, France, and 
Germany. The appeal to the consumer has therefore been 
made on the political field. 

To-day the consumer is represented on party platforms. 
It is in his interest that a "tariff revision downward" is 
demanded. Where one formerly heard in tariff dis3ussions 
of the necessity of protecting the workingman from "the 
pauper labor of Europe," one now hears of the rights of 
the "ultimate consumer." Where, in discussions of land 
policy, one formerly heard of the need of giving the land 
to the actual settler (or producer), one now hears of pre- 

* Passenger rates are usually paid immediately by the "ultimate con- 
sumer" ; the freight rate is paid, in the first instance, by the manufacturer 
or shipper. 

2 Similarly, in the England of 1846, cheap com was secured not primarily 
in the interests of the people who ate the corn, but in that of the manufac- 
turers who paid the wages that bought the corn. The lowered price of 
bread meant simply a lower cost of manufacturing cottons and woolens. 



THE GATHERING FORCES OF THE DEMOCRACY 253 

venting trusts from monopolizing mines, forests, and water 
sites, and thus raising the prices (to the consumer) of coal, 
wood, light, heat, and power. Our municipal ownership 
is in the interest of joint consumers, and more and more 
our railroad regulation is aiming at cheaper transportation. 

To secure their rights as consumers, as well as to secure 
other economic interests, less in common, the people unite 
as citizens to obtain a sensitive popular government. They 
attain to a certain political as well as economic solidarity. 
This solidarity is by no means a complete unification of 
interest. There remain differences in agreement and dis- 
cords in harmony. The middle classes are as much opposed 
to the trade-union as are the trusts, and the professional 
man is as anxious to secure a docile and cheap housemaid 
as the farmer is desirous of getting high prices for his wheat 
and paying low wages to his farm laborer. 

The elements of solidarity, however, being found in a 
common hostility to the plutocracy and a common interest 
in the social surplus, it becomes possible gradually so to 
compromise conflicting interests within the group as to 
secure a united front against a common enemy. The regu- 
lation of railroads in the interest of consumer and farmer 
may be extended to the protection of the railroad worker ; 
the conservation of natural resources may be linked to a 
similar policy of human conservation, to a campaign 
against destitution, and to a progressive labor policy which 
will insure the health, safety, comfort, and leisure of all 
workers. By such internal adjustments within the wide 
democratic army the possibility of a sufficient, permanent 
soUdarity is given. 

There is no evidence that the great army of potential 
democrats agree upon a clear-cut policy with regard to the 
solution of our economic problems. There is no reason to 
believe that they will ever agree in detail. But in vari- 
ous tentative and semiconscious ways they have already 



254 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

begun, through political organizations, non-political or- 
ganizations, and through expressions of public opinion, to 
unite in formulating progressive plans. This coalescence is 
expressed in many ways, by a vote, by a storm of newspaper 
criticism, by the popularity of a democratic leader. This 
solidarity in formation does not express itself always on 
the same subject, nor does it always express itself consist- 
ently, but gradually it approves, one after another, a se- 
ries of projects which, pieced together, constitute a demo- 
cratic program. The fact that democracy, in so far as it 
has been hitherto approximated in America, has been at- 
tained not at one stroke, nor by one policy, but by a series 
of gradual and not always logical approaches, makes it 
appear possible that out of the great inchoate democratic 
mass of the community, with enlistments from below 
and with defections to the class above, will come the mo- 
tive force to revolutionize society, to displace our present 
duality of resplendent plutocracy and crude ineffective 
democracy with a single, broad, intelHgent, sociaUzed, and 
victorious democracy. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 

THREE primary factors determine in the main the tac- 
tics and methods of the American democracy. The 
first of these factors is the complex of traditions, descended 
to us from the pioneer period. The second is our growing 
social surplus. The third is the wide diversity among the 
groups striving for democracy. 

Because of our American traditions, our democrats are 
more likely to proceed in a tentative, experimental, and 
rather illogical way ; to sail forward by tacking ; to break 
as little and as gradually as possible with our ingrained 
individualism. Americans are not abstract, uncompromis- 
ing thinkers. They are not like the men of the French 
Revolution, who would have dared to abolish the universe 
and recreate it on the morrow. We shall probably seek our 
salvation, to the limited extent still possible, outside of 
the state, and we shall doubtless ^'try out" governmental 
novelties in a few Western commonwealths (our political 
experiment stations) before applying them in the grand 
manner to the whole nation. Because of our traditions, 
we are likely to make changes by indirection and to pre- 
serve the form while altering the substance. 

Our wealth, actual and potential, reenforces these tend- 
encies. We live in a civilization where political animos- 
ities are not exacerbated by the actual hunger of the main 
bodies of contestants. The struggle is not less intense 
(just as prize fighting is not less intense because gloves 
have taken the place of bare knuckles), but the improved, 
and above all the improvable, economic status of the masses, 

255 



256 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

tends to make their action more confident, compromis- 
ing, and pacific. Our economic development, by giving 
some little wealth to so large a majority, binds over all 
parties to keep the peace. It exacts hostages to social 
order. It removes the incitement to the worst forms of 
social recklessness. Without recklessness, because not with- 
out hope, with a status to be bettered and with political 
rights with which to better it, the people, growing in power 
and discontent, can move forward gradually and quietly 
against the intrenchments of the plutocracy. 

The many-sidedness of the democratic masses exerts 
an identical influence. A movement backed up by a ma- 
jority of the voters is far more likely to proceed along con- 
stitutional and legal lines (making its constitutions and 
laws as it goes) than would be a movement backed up 
only by the industrial wageworkers without property, and 
opposed by all other elements of the population. Such 
a majority, composed of diverse groups with varying inter- 
ests, is more indirect, conciliatory, compromising, and 
evolutionary in action than would be a single homogene- 
ous class, with clear-cut class interests. 

As a result of all these causes, our democracy will proba- 
bly not need to resort to violence, and our democratic 
transformations may be carried through without the taking 
of lives or the wholesale confiscation of property. 

In all conflicts involving even the possibility of change 
in the social center of gravity, physical force still threatens 
to play its part. The state, resting on soldiers and police- 
men, themselves resting (in democratic communities) on 
the acquiescence of the people, itself embodies this element 
of force, which is used legally when the murderer is '' hanged 
by the neck until he is dead," or illegally when soldiers 
are quartered upon a peaceful population, or policemen 
violently break up strikes under cover of preventing vio- 
lence. In America an extra-legal physical force has often 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 257 

been appealed to. The North forcibly nuUified the Fugitive 
Slave Law, as the South subsequently nullified the Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments. To-day lynching and 
other mobs set the law at naught. The greater the polit- 
ical corruption and the larger the rewards of violence, the 
more frequent is the appeal to force. 

Fortunately, in all advanced nations the rule of brute 
force in the fixing of the balance of power is diminishing. 
As conditions become more settled, the physical force of 
the state becomes so superior to that of any group (not 
a majority) within the state as to render revolt on the 
plane of mere violence impracticable. 

In well-organized states the day of sporadic uprisings, 
of impromptu revolutions, is probably over. The modern 
organization of warfare favors the status quo. Effective 
arms have become too costly and too difficult of conceal- 
ment to be held by the unorganized people. Barricades 
are built of cobbles ; the modern streets are built of as- 
phalt. To-day the deadly, state-owned cannon would 
sweep through the wide, straight, unobstructed avenues, 
as the old cannon could not through the narrow, crooked, 
barricaded lanes of the olden city. The organized powers 
in the community hold the railroad, telegraph, and tele- 
phone. The state fights on inside lines. It can concen- 
trate all loyal forces against a disaffected minority. It 
can mobilize millions in the briefest time. 

It is becoming recognized, also, that violence is a clumsy, 
two-edged sword, which ultimately destroys him who wields 
it, A social group, compelled to use force against other 
sections of the community, finds itself a prey to the most vio- 
lent of its own members. Violence is not constructive. It 
is ugly. It alienates supporters and unites opponents, 
for, after all, civilization, with all its residual brutality, 
is squeamish about the sight of blood. Finally, we are 
coming into an intellectual, statistical age, where men know 



258 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

beforehand when they are beaten; where potential force, 
or the show of force, takes the place of force itself. Physi- 
cal force remains always in the background as the ulti- 
mate determinant — as the weapon which must be used 
when votes and ideas fail, when a people without rights are 
opposed, as in Russia to-day, by a clique without vision, 
conscience, or humanity. In civilized communities, how- 
ever, and especially in communities already advancing in 
democracy, force becomes of less immediate moment. 

Our national wealth, present and prospective, is our 
chief guarantee that the social problem will not needs be 
resolved by a thrust of the sword. The richer the commu- 
nity, the greater is the cost of internal strife, and the more 
futile any policy which drives men to arms. The vastness 
of the wealth to be conserved makes even our revolutionaries 
somewhat conservative, for there is small wisdom in lay- 
ing waste a city in which the victors must forevermore 
dwell. The victorious socialists of Milwaukee, but recently 
dreaded as iconoclasts, turn out to be constructive, con- 
ciliatory, Chesterfieldian, and enormously effective. Our 
most possessing classes are equally afraid of violence, not 
because it is likely to be successful, but because of the 
damage which would be inflicted before the bull could be 
driven from the china shop. They are therefore willing 
(as they are also able) to insure against the utter reckless- 
ness of misery by allaying the worst evils of poverty; just 
as the democratic masses are willing (and able) to refrain 
from recklessness because of the counter-recklessness which 
it would provoke, and because of the injury to their ultimate 
possessions which it would inflict. 

In America we can for the time being lay this specter of 
violence. What might happen if certain nation-debas- 
ing tendencies, now at work, were to overcome counteract- 
ing forces, what might happen if misery and oppression 
grew with the growth of wealth, is another question. For 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 259 

the day it is easier to vote and easier to get your vote counted 
than it is to fight, and curative forces are leading away from 
the sharp antagonism which would involve an appeal to 
naked force. To-day, when our soldiers under arms repre- 
sent less than one per thousand of the population, when 
our mihtia are loosely and not undemocratically organized, 
our broader democratic movements will in all probabihty 
neither rely upon force nor be resisted by force. ^ 

Not only is it probable (though not certain) that our 
democratic progress will be unaccompanied by a clash of 
armed men but the process is also more Ukely, because of 
our accumulated wealth, to be a social upbuilding from 
within rather than a demoUtion with a subsequent recon- 
struction. It is common to-day to see a vast railway sta- 
tion completely rebuilt, while, simultaneously, the traffic 
is carried on. So necessary is continuity when enormous 
interests are involved, that change, destruction, rebuild- 
ing do not interfere with the ordinary conduct of the busi- 
ness. Our social revolution must be consummated with 
a minimum of shock to our dehcate industrial, poHtical, 
and social machinery. Moreover, all progress must be 
built upon the foundations of our stored wealth. Just 
as the Christian churches were fashioned of the mar- 
ble of pagan temples, so our new world must be built upon 
the accumulations of the past. Our social reconstruction 
must be effected during business hours. It must be ac- 

1 The above statement is, of course, only general, and is perfectly con- 
sistent with instances in the past and the future, of the use of force by 
strikers, by employers, and by the State or nation in the interest of em- 
ployers. In Colorado the conflict between mine owners and mine laborers 
resulted in bribery, intimidation, assassination, and a state of affairs which 
might be likened to a labor war. There have been numerous instances of 
the use of police, armed detectives, private constabulary, the militia, and 
the federal troops, against strikers. It is probable, however, that the num- 
ber of men killed and injured during all the labor conflicts since the Civil 
War is very much less than the number killed or maimed every six months 
in the ordinary legally murderous course of industry. x. 



260 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

companied by preliminary plans, specifications, and esti- 
mates of cost. It must be gradual and quiet, though rapid. 

Nor is it inevitable that the progress of democracy will 
involve a wholesale confiscation of the property of the rich. 
Where wealth is growing at a rapid rate, the multitude 
may be fed without breaking into the rich man's granary; 
the lowly may be exalted without a pecuniary abasement 
of those of high degree. 

In the early days of poverty all conflicts meant the taking 
of some men's property by others. War was a business 
for profit, as were slave-raiding and piracy. The army 
lived on the spoils of the enemy or the lands of the people 
which it defended. A palace revolution, an attainder for 
treason, even a national struggle for religious supremacy, 
were influenced by the desire to secure the property of indi- 
viduals or classes. A revolution faced the necessity of 
paying its way at the expense of the defeated. 

To-day the rapid growth of the national wealth has cut 
the bond between social progress and confiscation. Our 
hope of a greater national wealth is a promise that we may 
enrich the whole population without impoverishing any one. 
Compared to the stupendous totals of our coming accumu- 
lations, the cost of progress is small. Had we in 1861 paid 
dollar for dollar for the slaves, we could within a decade 
have easily extinguished the resulting debt. If in 1880 
New York City had bought a few hundred square miles 
of territory in her vicinity, or had Pennsylvania bought 
her coal mines, or Minnesota her ore beds, the operation 
would have redounded so enormously to the pubhc benefit 
as to have rendered the alternative of confiscation unthink- 
able. If to-day the nation were to buy up its railroads and 
run them efficiently, the mere accretion in value during 
the next generation or two would make the purchase so 
profitable that the collective people could well afford to 
pay a fair price. So, generally, the stupendous present 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 261 

values of monoplies, which the nation may in the near 
future be compelled to take over, will seem ridiculously 
small fifty or a hundred years hence. What Belgium, 
Portugal, Italy, or Hungary, — nations with a lesser and a 
less sure future, — cannot afford to do, America is abun- 
dantly able to accomplish. The growing wealth of America 
is sufficient to permit our social transformations being car- 
ried through with a minimum of disappointment to the more 
moderate anticipations even of monopolists. 

Social appropriation without confiscation, however, in- 
volves a transformation much less likely to be violently 
resisted and much more likely to be actively welcomed. 
The social surplus thus makes for social peace. In the 
last analysis, the wars of all the ages have been wars 
of poverty. The dream of peace between nations, and of 
peace within nations, did not flourish until society had the 
prospect of enough to go around. 

Only to a certain extent is the evolution of democracy 
in America a social conflict. Partly this democracy will 
come automatically through growth and enlightenment ; 
partly it will be willingly conceded ; partly it will be con- 
tested inch by inch. Where the road to democracy runs 
through the wide fields of social harmony — those fertile 
fields where practically all social groups may be educated 
to acknowledge identical interests — no fighting is necessary. 
Only where the progress is one in which the gain of the 
democracy is the loss of a privileged, powerful class must 
there result a conflict, allayed by successive compromises, 
but ultimately fought out to a conclusion. 

These three elements of democratic progress, conflict, 
growth, and education are not always separate, even 
in thought. Fighting may involve growth. On the other 
hand, a relatively more rapid growth and a conse- 
quent physical crowding out of rivals is one form of con- 
flict between social groups, as between plants, animals, 



262 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

and nations. Japan had to defeat Russia in order to grow 
large enough in Korea to resist Russia. The United States, 
had she not bought Florida in 1819, would in the course 
of a century have so overgrown the sparse Spanish settle- 
ments as to have made a continuance of Spanish domination 
in that peninsula unthinkable. The overwhelming at the 
polls of obstructive forces is an instance of democratic prog- 
ress through conflict, as are also industrial concessions extorted 
through strikes. On the other hand, we grow into democ- 
racy or are educated into democracy through uncontested 
victories, through sheer technical progresses, improved 
pohtical and industrial education, through an increased 
capacity for combined activity, through an enlarged 
social consciousness, through a widened social outlook. 
The mere expansion of the trade-union movement in 
England, Germany, and America; the growth of the 
socialist party in Germany; the spread of the coopera- 
tive movement in Belgium; the popularization of edu- 
cation in the United States; the development in Amer- 
ica of a spirit of insurgency against respectable and bepraised 
evils, are all steps toward the attainment of democracy, 
independently of the actual use of such movements in 
eventual social conflicts. 

In a certain sense, these conflicts themselves constitute 
less a class struggle than a national adjustment. In this 
adjustment the mutual attractions and repulsions of social 
groups play their part, but so great is the potential over- 
weight of the democratic mass — once a strong solidarity 
is achieved — that victory depends not on the people's 
ability to fight, but on their capacity to unite. What 
hampers the democracy is not the actual, visible power of 
an intrenched plutocracy, but the lack of an intellectual 
perception to unite divergent classes ; the lack of an emo- 
tional appeal to overcome the divisive forces within the 
majority itself. The democracy is halted by its fear that 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 263 

it cannot run its own business ; by its very own conserva« 
tism. It is this inherent, though curable, timorousness, this 
social paralysis, as well as a tendency to split up into its 
constituent groups, rather than any outside constraining 
force, which in the past has delayed oin- democratic progress 
and has confined us to the ruts of a traditional thinking and 
voting. 

The internal adjustment of the democracy is a process 
of uniting groups, by no means agreed in the details of 
what constitutes progress. We have ^^semidemocrats," 
with '^leanings '^ or tendencies toward certain democratic 
reforms, but opposed to others. For this reason (and it is 
an outstanding reason) we are forced to content ourselves 
with half-reforms, especially when the half -successes are the 
earnest of further successes. Men opposed to the regula- 
tion of corporations will support ballot reform and direct 
primaries, and men who would bitterly fight a progressive 
income tax will support a corporation law. All these 
'^semidemocrats" are utiHzed by the advancing demo- 
cratic movement. Democracy hitches on behind even when 
the wagon does not go the whole way. 

The democracy proceeds along a middle path, which is 
the fine of least resistance. It uses broad phrases, vague 
enough to attract by different hopes men who are dis- 
satisfied with only the details of our national economj^, as 
well as those who wish a basic change in business and 
pontics. The democracy, seeking ever to appeal to a 
majority, recasts its doctrines to attain that majority. It 
does not favor confiscation, because its own majority has 
property.^ But it does attack ^^ swollen^' fortunes (which 
belong to the minority), as it attacks the monopoly which 

* There is, of course, no clear boundary line to confiscation, and it is a 
matter of degree and opinion where taxation, reasonable regulation, or 
fair payment end and confiscation begins. Our courts have been wholly 
unable to give any logical and universally applicable definition of oo»« 
fiscation. 



264 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

leads to them, the ''special privilege" which increases them, 
the unequal, or evaded, taxation which conserves them, 
and the business secrecy and business oligarchy which make 
them perpetual. The democracy does not permit the 
issue to become one between the propertied and the un- 
pi-opertied, but distinguishes between property and privilege, 
between earned, and unearned, increment; between legiti- 
rhate investment and promoters' profits. 
^' By taking this line of least resistance, the democracy 
fihds allies where a more uncompromising group would find 
ehiBmies. Men who are dependent on an industry, work- 
men and stockholders ahke, do not necessarily desire an 
Autocratic rule within the industry. The poHcyholders of 
the great insurance companies — the real investors — are 
benefited, not injured, by an effective governmental con- 
trol. In the same spirit the democracy stops short, at 
K&6^^" temporarily, of doing more than the immediately 
necessary. The government regulates interstate railroad 
traffic and other businesses affected with a pubhc interest, 
and, as the need becomes apparent, control by the nation 
becomes more complete. But the democracy is not so 
impracticable as to wish to regulate the tillage of the inde- 
pendent farmer, the hours of labor of the doctor or lawyer, 
the capitalization and profits of the corner grocery store. 
The goal of the democracy is a maximum of control with a 
minimum of regulation. 

In other words, the democracy, not being slavishly bound 
to ^ lo'^giy,'' would rather be successful than thorough. It 
i&fes' riot tear up root and branch, but merely weeds out 
l*6ughly, for social, like natural, evolution permits the sur- 
vival of harmless rudiments. Just as the vestige of a pre- 
human tail survives in the human coccyx, so we have, and 
always will have, a social coccyx, a social vermiform appen- 
(ii^, aia^d other reminders of a lower past. America will 
always be a jumble of old and new, of "Yankee notions" 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 265 

in government and business and the political junk of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We need not im- 
mediately slough off social beliefs and institutions when they 
cease to be visibly useful, just as we may still speak of 
Thursday after ceasing to believe in the great god Thor.^ 

In its gradual and progressive adjustment, the com- 
promising and conciliatory democracy enjoys the advantage 
of being opposed by a cautious plutocracy. Just as the 
most dangerous fencer is the novice whose feints and salHes 
are unpredictable, so the most dangerous social opponent is 
the class driven by ignorance and cowardice into the most 
desperate ventures. 

Though the plutocracy is cautious and comfortable, it 
often acts the role of a hard-driven, desperate antagonist. 
The road to democracy is scarred with ^^ast ditches." As 
the people advance, the receding plutocracy cries fran- 
tically, ''Thus far shalt thou go and no farther,'' and occa- 
sionally when a particularly inexcusable attempt is made 
to subordinate the national business to the nation, the 
plutocracy, in the outraged dignity of a tragedy queen, 
cries out aloud, ''Another step forward, and I die." In 
reality, the plutocracy never dies. The railroads do not 
cease running; the refineries do not cease refining; the 
pubUc service corporation, "swearing she will ne'er con- 
sent," consents. If the railroads were to close up shop, 
they would take the bread and butter from the mouths of 
milUons of American citizens. It would be a terrible 
example. But to whom ? n joaai iBiaiiixn luo 

The democracy in the course of its instructive^^ victories 
and its equally instructive defeats learns that the surest 

» The metempsychosis of kings from arrogant tyrants to domestica^^ 
national pets and, incidentally, democratic advisers, illustrates, how sMlI^ 
fully a democracy can adapt an old form to a new end. -A Henry the 
Seventh, a James the Second, even a George the Third, would be an un= 
thinkable anachronism in the England of to-day, but a George the Pi^tl fe 
a national asset, as the Lord Mayor or the Tower of London is an asaefirC 



266 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

method of progress is to take one step after another. The 
first step, often uncontested (because it is only one step), 
leads inevitably to others. Democratic progress is succes- 
sive, not simultaneous. 

The steps once taken are progressively easy. For ex- 
ample, the retention and exploitation by the federal gov- 
ernment of the resources of Alaska would disappoint only a 
small number of prospective miUionaires, while it would not 
only give the government an immensely increased wealth, 
but might serve as an opening wedge for other wide-branch- 
ing programs of reform. If the billions of potential wealth 
in Alaska were to be devoted — let us say — to the subsidy 
of our national education, we should be a wiser nation thirty 
years hence. So, a purely 'Voluntary" federal incorpora- 
tion law would doubtless lead to an efficient compulsory 
incorporation law which would eventually insure a control 
over the most recondite operations of all great corporations. 
A minimum tax on inheritances contains the germ of a 
definite prohibition of insanely large accumulations. A 
merely nominal tax upon our coal reserves involves eventu- 
ally the end of the forestalling of our natural resources. 
There are mineral lands worth, to-day, a few hundreds of 
millions, which fifty or a hundred years hence will be worth 
billions of dollars. If the nation could approach the 
owners of these lands with the sword of a gentle tax in the 
one hand and the oHve branch of a fair purchase price in 
the other, there would soon be no fear of any monopoly of 
our mineral resources. 

As the government can unobtrusively enter the tent of 
business, so the people without proclamations or fireworks 
can enter into control of the state. The time will come 
when the Constitution will be made easily amendable by 
the people. Until this is accomplished, however, the 
simplest way, whenever an alteration of the Constitution is 
essential to progress, is to persuade the people, who elect 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 267 

the President and the Senators, who choose the Supreme 
Court judges, that the proposed change is in the pubHc 
interest, and therefore is in harmony with the putative 
intent of the framers of the document. If in the full swing 
and current of a victorious democratic movement a ma- 
jority of judges, imbued with popular ideas, would interpret 
a single clause of the Constitution in a sense often con- 
tended for, but never as yet accepted by the courts, the 
door would be opened to a complete democratization of our 
whole political and economic system.^ Political, like eco- 
nomic, reforms lead the way to others of the same kind. 
A voluntary and partial regulation of party primaries leads 
within a few years to a compulsory and state-wide direct 
primary. A restricted application of the principle of refer- 
endum and initiative leads to its universal and unrestricted 
adoption. Extra-legal arrangements, such as the direct 
election of United States Senators, completely alter our 
fundamental constitutional system, without touching the 
Constitution. It is progress step by step. It is progress 
by indirection. It is a successful flank movement, instead 
of a brave, but suicidal, frontal attack. 

1 The clause consists of the italicized words in the following sentence 
from the eighth section of the first article. "Congress shall have power : 
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and 
provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." 
The courts have always interpreted these final words, not as an independ- 
ent grant of power, but as a statement of purposes for the levying of taxes, 
and, as such, a condition or limitation of the grant, **to lay and collect 
taxes," etc. But the courts have, before this, changed their interpretations 
and forced new meanings upon old words. The grant to Congress of the 
right to "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United 
States," coupled with the right "to make all laws which shall be necessary 
and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers," would wipe 
away practically all restrictions upon our federal legislative bodies. It is 
not here contended that such a judicial decision would be entirely desirable 
in the present state of public opinion and political capacity, but in the years 
to come, either this or some other interpretation having a similar broadening 
effect is more probable than is the attainment of the same end by direct 
amendments to the Constitution under our present system of amending. 



268 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

By such indirect means, which, after all, are the means 
naturally adopted by the people, even a revolution may be 
"safe, sane, and conservative." We may change the very 
bases of our government, law, and business ; we may jump 
the hurdles of the Constitution, and may circumvent the 
obstacles of a mass of antiquated judicial decisions, while 
walking along the paths of legality and constitutionalism, 
and abjuring all get-there-quick methods and all violent 
conflicts with our historic past. A wound, to kill a man, 
need not be ''so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church 
door" ; a pin thrust at the right spot will serve. So, if we 
are to end a long list of industrial and political evils, we 
need not attack property, which is to attack the majority. 
We need not evoke a class war, which is a war of the weak 
against the strong. We need not take all the unearned in- 
crement, which we may find in our own farms and in our 
own single shares of stock. We need not cure everything 
at once. We may take step by step, as the chance pre- 
sents itself. 

In the working out of such a policy of successive actions 
and of well-considered delays, time and technical progress 
often work on the side of the democracy. When electricity 
supplanted horses on the street cars, the cities, aided by 
the States, had an opportunity of practically retaking their 
old franchises by refusing to permit to the old Unes the 
use of the new traction, while at the same time offering the 
companies a fair price for their rusty rails. So, to-day, 
when the rights of way into the center of cities have given 
certain railroads an enormous monopoly value, ^ a new 
opportunity is afforded to the city, State, or nation to 
secure an underground entrance for new railroads run 
under the city streets. In every generation our inventors 
discover a virgin continent, and the new vast resources, 

» For example, the New York Central's route into New York, the 
Pennsylvania's into Philadelphia, and the Illinois Central's into Chicago. 






THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 269 

thus thrown into the public's lap, may be utiUzed, wasted, 
or monopolized. Usually they are wasted or given to 
favorites. The occasional sparks of social prevision shine 
out in a black infinity of utter governmental thriftlessness 
^4ike a good deed in a naughty world.'' But we are slowly 
learning. In the future we shall better know how to lay 
our corporate hands upon the things which science and 
invention throw our way. 

Our progress, though gradual, must be rapid. We dare 
not make a virtue of slowness, nor exalt the snail as the 
only true reformer. Just as they who surrender themselves 
to celestial Utopias cease to care for progress upon a too, 
too solid earth, so they who content themselves with 
walking, when they might run or fly, see the long years 
pass without worthy progress. In our political and indus- 
trial world, as in Looking Glass Land, you must run very 
fast indeed merely to remain where you are. 

Democratic progress, moreover, must be coordinated, pre- 
pared, tested. It must consist of necessary links in an 
increasingly visible chain. The advantage of gradual reform 
is that it permits a sort of psychological acclimatization on 
the part of the reformed. But for a policy to be truly 
graduated, it must possess an inherent unity. It must not 
be a choppy, disjointed, and spasmodic succession of un- 
correlated social efforts. It does not hurt a dog less to cut 
its tail off by inches, nor a corporation less to subject it 
gradually to a dozen successive criminal prosecutions. No 
merely sporadic action, whether it be an '^exposure," a 
tirade, a punitive fine, or an exemplary jail sentence, can 
effect much permanent good, and a series of sporadic actions 
does not constitute a graduated reform. The democracy, 
though compromising in action, must be uncompromising in 
principle. Though conciliatory towards opponents, it must 
be constant to its fixed ideals. Though it tack with the 
wind, it must keep always in sight its general destination. 



270 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

What the democracy needs is a consistent and constructive 
policy, changed from time to time as new exigencies or new 
interpretations of social facts require, but carried out un- 
flinchingly, and realized as opportunities permit. A policy 
of single steps is desirable only when each step leads to 
other steps, not yet practicable, but at least dimly fore- 
seeable. 

Finally, the democracy, in its forward march, must keep 
a watchful eye to the rear. It must promote a constant 
cohesion within its ranks. It must abate internal strife. 
It must gather an ever increasing number of recruits from 
the still unawakened but potentially democratic masses. 

Whatever else its tactics be, the democratic movement 
must keep pace with the masses of its probable supporters, 
marching just far enough ahead to be able to lead. To 
proceed at a much faster rate than the psychological develop- 
ment of the mass is to court a swift and powerful reaction. 
More than anything else the democratic movement must 
maintain harmony among its groups. Social cooperation, 
which is the goal of democracy, is also its weapon. 

The goal of internal harmony is more easily recognized 
than attained, and it is often more difficult to conciliate 
an ally than to defeat an enemy. The various subgroups 
of democrats and semidemocrats have divergent, and even 
antagonistic, interests. The workman has his sharp con- 
flict with his employer, and he cannot afford, in furthering 
his general interests (those which he has in common with 
the business man), to surrender his special claims. The 
social surplus, so largely monopolized by the plutocracy, 
is a splendid prize in itself, and herein the proletariat, Hke 
other groups, has '^a world to gain." But in giving their 
adherence to the democratic alliance, the workingmen, 
like other social groups, are entitled to a quid pro quo. 

Even more divisive than these divergent interests of sub- 
groups are the varying philosophies and the often startling 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 271 

idiofc-vncrasies of rival democratic leaders. A witty abo- 
litionist once declared that to free the slaves, an all-wise 
Providence had chosen as His instruments people whom she 
would not touch with a ten-foot pole. . Among democrats 
— as also among Methodists ^ single-taxers, stammerers, 
and longshoremen — there are wise and foolish, temperate 
and fanatic. There is the Quixotic genius, who eats up his 
energy in friction, and through very excess of zeal is thrown 
off tangentially into the frigid void of indifference. There 
are others of a more lethargic temperament, who live in a 
quiet connubial commerce with their ideals, neither demand- 
ing much nor failing often. There are people immersed in 
the pettiest of preoccupations, who nevertheless ^' catch'' 
democracy as they catch influenza, and who rise to the 
surface because o' their low specific gravity. These con- 
stitutionally hostile people, though hating the same thing, 
do not always love each other, and many serious difficul- 
ties arise from temperamental misconceptions and from 
the lack of an emotional appeal or of an intellectual 
insight powerful enough to overturn these psychological 
barriers. 

A still heavier burden upon the democratic movement is 
the residual inertness of the mass. In part this is a defect 
of education, for knowledge is desire, and men want when 
they see. Outside the groups of men who are always or 
generally on the side of democracy, however, there is that 
wide fringe of indifferent men and women, who lack the 
leisure, the education, or the social conscience to see public 
problems other than vaguely and intermittently, and who 
oppose a sluggish resistance to the realization even of their 
own perceived advantages. The men who are harried by 
the quest of bread and butter and automobiles; who are 
intellectually withered through brainless overwork; who are 
ground up between the millstones of a feverish money- 
getting and a feverish money-spending ; the men who are 



272 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

immersed in the most transient and insignificant of events, 
tend to lose sight entirely of their share in large public 
matters. 

In this respect, in its being compelled to carry the im- 
pedimenta of a long accumulated indifference, the wide 
democratic movement of to-day may be compared with the 
woman's suffrage movement, which is one of its symptoms. 
The movement for the political emancipation of women 
suffers less from active antagonism than from the inertness 
of many women to whom it should appeal. The move- 
ment, when successful, will but shghtly affect the distribu- 
tion of political and economic power, because the lines of 
social cleavage do not largely parallel sex lines, and men 
will gain much more than they will lose from this extension 
of the suffrage. In the same way, the antisuffragists, far 
from being the opponents, are the real, though innocent, 
coadjutors of the suffragists. The antisuffrage movement, 
though it wanders rather forlornly in alien thoroughfares, 
is, after all, like the suffrage movement, an unmistakable 
sign of an awakened social consciousness among women. 
The antisuffragists — those strident declaimers for quietude, 
those able defenders of women's most cherished disabilities 
— are sprung, after all, from the identical soil as their pro- 
gressive sisters. The '^anti's" will convince all that some 
women are politically capable, and that some are politicalh' 
ambitious, and, even more effectively than the suffragists, 
they will prove that the bonds which have so long gagged 
and blinded and hobbled the half of humanity are being 
one by one and forever broken. The real opponents of 
woman's right to vote are not our energetic though somnam- 
bulistic ^'anti's," but the great sluggish mass of pleasant, 
politically unawakened women, the psychologically sub- 
merged.^ 

* Antagonism is often a more fertile field for propaganda than indiffer- 
ence, for the will to combat is not always so different from the will to be- 



THE TACTICS OF THE DEMOCRACY 273 

To unite those who are already acknowledged demo- ) 
crats, and to enlist those who do not yet know or care I 
what they are, a long continued campaign of education is 
necessary. This education includes the learning of the 
schools and colleges and that also of the newspaper, maga- 
zine, book, play, sermon, factory, street, railroad, market, 
and city. It involves a breaking of the tablets of conserv- 
atism ; a freeing of the mind from poHtical and economic 
fetish worship, and the cultivation of a popular receptivity 
for new ideas. 

Our old notions, not our corporeal enemies, enslave us. 
We must throw over the old cramping maxims of days of 
poverty. We must throw over our conceptions of cost 
and value (which measure wealth by effort) and must accept 
new ideas of utility (which measure wealth by pleasure and 
satisfaction). We must recognize that we have the social 
wealth to cure our social evils — and that until we have 
turned that social wealth against poverty, crime, vice, 
disease, incapacity, and ignorance, we have not begun to 
attain democracy. We must change our attitude towards 
government, towards business, towards reform, towards 
philanthropy, towards all the facts immediately or remotely 
affecting our industrial and poHtical Ufe. Such an educa- 
tion of its own members, present and prospective, must be 
a necessary part of a democratic campaign. 

One might well fear for a democratic organization which 
contained so many diverse and conflicting elements ; which 
comprised such irreconcilable personaUties ; which depended 
upon so inert an outside mass; and which was forced 
to educate to new and revolutionary concepts so many 
hstless millions of traditionally-minded people. Without 
undue skepticism, one might fear that a movement which 

lieve. There often seems more hope of radical action from a rabid reac* 
tionary than from a contented conservative, because the reactionary, 
though he moves backwards, at least moves. 

T 



274 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

is merely the resultant of constantly changing social 
forces might fail to eventuate, or might succumb to its 
obstacles. 

Nevertheless, while people are proclaiming that demo- 
cratic progress is impossible, it is already upon us. While 
we are being shown by diagram that the people cannot 
even tell what democracy is, we need only look out of our 
window to see them actually achieving democracy. Babies 
learn to eat before they know the muscles of the alimentary 
canal or the chemistry of the digestive juices, and men 
learn to unite without seeing or knowing their alUes, and to 
march stolidly without clearly seeing their goal. 

To-day the democratic army, united by the loosest 
bonds, and subjected to the most attenuated discipline, is 
moving along three wide roads to a common but not clearly 
perceived goal. ( These three roads are the democratization 
of ' government, the socialization of industry, and the civiH- 
/' zation of the citizen.'^ These roads meet and cross and 
interwine, and the various contingents join and separate, 
and again join and again separate, while, all the time, the 
army, stretching out far into the distance, approaches nearer 
to its goal. The men in the rear, marching partly through 
an inertia of motion, partly through imitation of the men 
ahead, occasionally desert and again reenlist. They see 
only vaguely the outlines of the country to which they are 
marching. But with each advance their view becomes 
clearer and with each new day the habit of marching and 
the instinct of fellowship with the men ahead increase. 
Occasionally great bodies, attracted by new leaders, branch 
off into side paths, which seem shorter and straighter, and 
some of these detachments are lost, and some, by occupy- 
ing cross paths, obstruct the passage of the main army; 
while others, by still marching, once more strike the com- 
mon road and thus rejoin their comrades. Gradually the 
army, though composed of many detachments led by m&::y 



THE TACTICS OP THE DEMOCRACY 275 

generals, becomes somewhat more unified. Gradually, as 
many men coming from many places converge on common 
points, the three broad roads of the march, the roads of 
democratic government, of socialized industry, and of a 
civilized people, become clearly marked highways. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 

rriHE industrial goal of the democracy is the socializa- 
JL tion of industry. It is the attainment by the people 
of the largest possible industrial control and of the largest 
possible industrial dividend. The democracy seeks to 
attain these ends through government ownership of indus- 
try ; through government regulation ; through tax reform ; 
through a moralization and reorganization of business in the 
interest of the industrially weak. 

Everywhere we find evidences of industrial developments 
in the general direction of this goal. Government goes into 
business. The Post Office embarks upon the banking busi- 
ness and threatens to engage in the express business. The 
Forestry Bureau raises and sells timber. The Reclamation 
Service goes into many separate businesses in connection 
with the building of dams and the seUing of water. In the 
construction of the Panama Canal, the government builds 
roads and railroads and conducts dozens of separate enter- 
prises. At the same time, the States and cities greatly 
extend the sphere of their direct participation in business, 
and buy and manufacture and sell on an enlarging scale. 

Government regulation grows simultaneously. It extends 
over more industries, and over more operations of industries. 
Railroad regulation, both by the nation and by some thirty 
States, becomes wider. Railroad rates, services, account- 
ing come within the purview of State and national regula- 
tion. A corporation tax law marks the beginning of a 
wider investigation of all corporation actions. A Bureau 
of Corporations and a Tariff Board demand explicit infor- 

276 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 27? 

mation concerning manufacturing and selling concerns. 
Factory and labor laws regulate the internal economy of 
businesses. Pure food laws, postal laws, corporation laws, 
etc., regulate business from the points of view of consumer 
and investor. A federal incorporation law is proposed with 
the idea of subjecting all corporations doing an interstate 
business to the control of the federal government. 

Still other developments reveal this democratic goal. 
Our public lands, mines, and water powers are reserved for 
the people instead of being indiscriminately given away, 
as formerly. A strongly antagonistic attitude towards 
^^ swollen fortunes'' is revealed, and proposals are made to 
reduce these swellings by heavy taxes, and to use the powers 
of taxation generally to lessen economic inequalities. Trade- 
unions with tens of thousands of members claim a partial 
control of industry, and the general community asserts its 
right to participate in the settlement of industrial disputes. 
A new insistence is laid upon the social interest in all mani- 
festations of our industrial life. 

The broad outlines of the democracy's industrial pro- 
gram, so far as they have reached the general conscious- 
ness, are to be found in the promises and declamations of 
the platforms of our political parties. These platforms are 
for the most part insincere, but it is exactly their insincerity 
which gives them their evidential value. A platform does 
not show what the politician wants, but does show what 
that astute person believes that the people want. It is the 
tribute, often the sole tribute, which the candidate pays to 
the popular wish. The platform's ambiguities are equally 
enlightening. Nothing reveals more clearly the presence, 
and even the relative strength, of two opposed forces in 
society than do the platform's nicely balanced sentences, 
in which two warring clauses reduce each other to an in= 
nocuous meaninglessness. 

The superlative value of the platform as evidence is due 



278 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

to the fact that it is always addressed to a potential ma- 
jority. All platforms (Republican, Democratic, SociaUst, 
Prohibition) appeal to ''the masses, '' to ''the many," to 
"the people." Thus the 1909 tariff is denounced by the 
Democratic State (1910) platforms because it oppresses 
"the many for. the benefit of the few" (Alabama) ; because 
"it plunders the many to enrich the few" (Michigan); 
because it imposes "added burdens upon the toihng and 
consuming masses" (Colorado), while building "up great 
fortunes for a favored few" (Connecticut); because it has 
made heavier "the burdens of the consuming masses" 
(Georgia) ; thus "involving remorseless exactions from the 
many to enrich the few" (Indiana), and so on through all 
the States. For the protection of the many against the few, 
the trusts are assailed, the conservation of natural re- 
sources is approved, and the adoption of the income tax 
amendment is urged. All of which soHcitude for "the 
many" is expHcable, since while "the favored few" often 
rule the party, it is "the many" who furnish the votes. ^ 

The most characteristic feature of the industrial pro- 
gram of the democracy, as revealed in party platforms and 
in books, newspapers, and speeches, as well as in actual 
legislation, is the emphasis which is laid upon the state in 
industry. Government ownership and regulation — national, 
State, and local — are urged for more and more industries. 
The dividend from industry, which people are demanding, is 
more largely a joint than an individual dividend. It is a 
dividend which the individual citizen can obtain only 

1 "The two dominant political parties," says the New York State 
Socialist Platform of 1910, "pretend to stand for all the people; the so- 
called reform parties claim to speak for the good people ; the Socialist party 
frankly acknowledges that it is concerned chiefly with the working people." 
Since, however, all the working people of the State are the chief concern 
of the party, and since it aligns "those who toil" against "those who 
prey," and "those who are robbed" against "those who rob," it may also 
be considered to be broad in its platform appeal. 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 279 

through the intermediation of the State or nation ; in 
other words, through an extension of State control over 
industry.^ 

What the democracy desires, however, is not government 
ownership for itself^ but merely as much government owner- 
ship, regulation, or control as may be necessary to a true 
sociaUzation of industry. The democracy's goal — the so- 
ciahzation of industry — is a viewing of our manifold busi- 
ness life from the standpoint of society and not solely from 
that of the present beneficiaries or directors of industry. It 
is such a coordination of business as will permanently give the 
greatest happiness and the highest development to the larg- 
est number of individuals, and to society as a whole. 

SociaUzation is thus a point of view. It is less a definite 
industrial program than the animating ideal of a whole 
industrial poHcy. It is a standard by which industrial 
conditions and industrial developments must be adjudged. 

In certain industries socialization may involve a govern- 
ment monopoly. In others, it may mean government opera- 
tion in competition with private businesses; or a govern- 
ment ownership with private management ; or a division of 
the profits of private industries. Or it may involve a 
thoroughgoing regulation of an industry, prescribing rates, 
prices, services, wages, hours, labor conditions, dividends, 
and the internal economy in general. Or, socialization may 
mean a lesser regulation ; or mere publicity ; or encourage- 
ment; or subsidies; or legal recognition; or simply the 
prescribing of a minimum capital or of a preliminary train- 
ing. Again, socialization may mean a deflection of the 
stream of wealth which flows from an industry, a deflection 
accomplished by tax laws, or by laws altering the conditions 

* The old cry, "Vote yourself a farm," represented an individualistic 
point of view. It was the man's share of a divisible and alienable public 
domain that was wanted ; not his joint share in an indivisible thing, such 
as a public library, a public park, improved educational facilities, etc. 



280 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

of convejdng property. Finally, socialization may be 
accomplished without direct governmental regulation. How 
far the government shall interfere depends on the business. 
An insurance company, to which people who are not actuaries 
give money now that their widows may receive money fifty 
years hence, requires a different regulation from the business 
of the corner tailor, who presses your coat while you wait. 

Because it is not restricted as to means, socialization may 
effect itself without a million minute rules. To-day each of 
our ninety-two million citizens is enjoined against thousands 
of crimes and misdemeanors and against thousands of pos- 
sible violations of the property rights of each of his ninety- 
two million neighbors. And yet, most of us obey the law 
without thinking. In many industries profit seeking (with 
certain broad restrictions and encouragements) will result 
in a substantial socialization. A few hundreds of milUons 
a year intelligently spent on agricultural and general edu- 
cation, on experiment stations, on public roads, etc., would 
do more to effect a better socialization of agriculture than 
a fifty- volume code of agricultural law. 

Nor does socialization involve the negation of profits. 
The love of gain is a tough and wholesome human fiber. 
It is the crude motive power of industry. Socialization 
considers profit seeking neither as a universally beneficent 
regulative impulse nor as the stubborn root of all industrial 
evils. It regards profits and wages as contributions to a 
larger end, to be balanced as such against other results of 
the industry. If a given industry creates on the whole an 
excess of costs over utilities, or if it affords a smaller surplus 
of utilities than would the same amount of capital and labor 
invested otherwise, then it is within the province of societ;- 
to reform, or even to aboHsh the industry.^ 

1 If society, without warning, prohibits actions and business methods 
which it formerly encouraged or tolerated, there may be a fair question as 
to whether employers and workmen, suffering losses from such unantici- 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 281 

Socialization considers industry as a whole. The national 
business is ^^one and indivisible" ; an indissoluble union of 
autonomous, but linked, industries.^ 

In emphasizing this oneness of business, socialization is 
doing on a large scale and from the point of view of society 
what the trust did on a smaller scale from the point of view 
of the profit-taker. Like the trust, sociaUzation subjects 
rival or dissimilar businesses to the sway of a single aim. 
Like the trust, socialization attains unity without sacrificing 
variety. The trust does not always end the separate ex- 
istence of constituent companies. So, under a complete 
sociaUzation of our national industry, we would have thou- 
sands of separate kinds of business under different forms of 
ownership, management, and control, but each continuing its 
existence and mode of life because adapted, in the opinion 
of society, to contribute its share to the best progress of 
industry as a whole. 

Like the trust, also, socialization does not end competition. 
The trust encourages internal competition. The right hand 
is stimulated to do better than the left, and the left to excel 
the right. The factory manager who attains a greater output 
or a less cost per unit of product than rival managers is 
appropriately recompensed. It is a '^personally conducted" 
competition, which differs from the competition outside the 
trust (the industrial helium omnium contra omnes) as the 
Prince Charles spaniel differs from his savage cousin, the 
gray wolf. Similarly, socialization relies upon competition, 

pated prohibition, may not justly claim compensation. The essential point 
of socialization, however, is not this eventual compensation, but the right, 
reserved and exercised by society, of determining, in last resort, what 
things may be produced and how. 

1 There is a theory of business which is diametrically opposed to indus- 
trial socialization. This theory, which we may call industrial autonomyj 
considers the national eoonomy as a series of largely unconnected industrial 
parts, each the province of the people actually engaged in it. It regards 
industrial enterprises as international law regards the nations, — as sov- 
ereign bodies, with the internal affairs of which no one may meddle. 



282 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

which educates and steels competitors, though it opposes 
competition which injures the contestants or others.^ 

In actual fact socialization, in so far as it involves the 
actual intervention of the state, is used largely to supple- 
ment or correct competition. It is where competition is 
atrophied, as in the case of monopolies, or where it appears 
in a pathological form, as in child labor, industrial parasitism, 
etc., that the intervention of the state is most needed. 

Especially is this true of monopolies. '^ Where monopoly 
is inevitable,'^ says the Wisconsin Republican Platform of 
1910, ''we favor complete government regulation.'' The 
Illinois Democrats are in favor of an extension of the govern- 
mental policy of conservation, because they ''are opposed to 
the gobbling up of the mines, the forests, the oil fields, and 
the water-power sites of the country by the greedy repre- 
sentatives of Big Business." All through our pohtical 
hterature runs the attack upon "monopohes," "the trusts 
and monopolies," "the corporate trusts," "certain corpora- 
tions and combinations of capital." ^ 

One reason for the government ownership or regulation 

1 This distinction between social and antisocial competition is empha- 
sized by trade-union leaders in their defense of minimum conditions. They 
argue that the competitive battle should be fought out along the socially 
advantageous lines of directive genius, improved factory organization, the 
installation of better machinery, and not along the socially disadvantageous 
lines of a lowering of wages, a lengthening of hours, a worsening of condi- 
tions, or an exploitation of the labor of little children. The end of the lower 
competition is the sweatshop ; that of the higher is that wonderful series 
of inventions which cannot be utilized except when labor is sufficiently 
intelligent and sufficiently rewarded. 

2 While it is impossible to draw an absolute distinction between com- 
petitive industries and monopolies (since there is an appreciable monopoly 
element in businesses usually called competitive, and an appreciable com- 
petitive element in most of our so-called monopolies), still, in the majority 
of cases, we can tell roughly whether the industry is preponderatingly com- 
petitive or monopolistic. On the whole, a competitive industry is one in 
which any person or corporation possessing a moderate capital is able to 
produce the product at approximately equal advantage with the majority 
of the persons already engaged in the industry. 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 283 

of monopolies is that, unregulated, they lead to an absorption 
by small groups of too large a share of the social surplus. 
Under the old theory of competition, such a business hyper- 
trophy was impossible, because high profits would attract 
new competitors and profits would fall. But to-day com- 
petition is aborted, and shares more modestly with monopoly 
the rule of the industrial world. We cannot trust to com- 
petition to reduce the monopoly profits of the anthracite 
carrying railroads, just as we cannot afford to throw our- 
selves upon the '^enlightened selfishness^^ of these corpora- 
tions. 

Hitherto our federal government has lagged far behind 
the governments of western Europe in the matter of direct 
ownership and management of businesses. Such progress 
as has been made along these fines has taken the form 
of a gradual growth of functions already exercised. The 
government has enormously expanded a number of non- 
profit-earning businesses, in which it has long since en- 
gaged. 

It is probable, however, that a considerable extension of 
the federal government's ownership and direction of busi- 
ness will take place in the future. Three factors are leading 
in this direction. One is the increasingly evident monopoly 
character of many large businesses; a second is the im- 
provement in our civil service; a third is the progressive 
democratization of the government. As monopoly invades 
business, the choice lies between government and private 
monopoly, instead of between government monopoly and 
competition. The monopoly element in the business aligns 
'Hhe many'' against a few insiders. As the civil service 
improves, moreover, the government is enabled to conduct 
business both honestly and efficiently. As the state becomes 
increasingly democratized, the people accept it as their 
natural representative, as opposed to an entrenched indus- 
trial oligarchy in a monopolized business. 



284 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The logic of the situation seems to demand that where 
there are no advantages in the private industry from 
individual initiative, or where those advantages do not 
overweigh the advantages which the state could secure 
from the conduct of the industry, the business should 
be taken over by the state after compensation to owners, 
and should be conducted by the state under conditions 
which guarantee reasonable permanence, stabihty, and 
security to all engaged, while preserving a regulated com- 
petition within the industry with promotion for extra 
ability or extra effort (according to definite rules of 
preferment) and with suitable rewards, monetary or other- 
wise. 

How far and how rapidly the federal government will 
take over private business is a question which to-day can- 
not yet be answered. It seems by no means improbable 
that the government will shortly take over the express busi- 
ness by embarking upon the lucrative and easily conducted 
parcels post. It will probably extend its banking busi- 
ness. It may not improbably take over the telegraph 
systems of the country, which have developed slowly be- 
cause they have been run so exclusively for profit. The 
government may enormously increase its business of pro- 
viding itself with supplies, with ships, and harbors, and blot- 
ting paper. It may engage more and more largely in the 
construction of irrigation dams and in the sale of water to 
a larger number of farmers. It may attain to a preeminent 
position in the lumber business of the country. Beyond 
these proximate fields lie others which may or may not come 
to be occupied. The government may (and if regulation 
fails, it will) buy, own, and operate the railroads of the 
country ; it may own and operate the coal mines. It may 
in time take step after step towards an ownership of those 
large, easily overseen, and inherently monopolistic businesses 
where centralization and subordination rule, and where 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OP THE DEMOCRACY 285 

the choice lies between a government monopoly and a private 
monopoly.^ 

It is partly the fear of such a possible extension of govern- 
ment ownership and operation that is at the base of much 
of the opposition to the poHcy of conserving our natural 
resources. This policy, one of the most elementary forms 
of business sociahzation, was dictated by pressing need. Our 
supposedly unlimited suppKes of timber were proved to be 
nearing exhaustion.^ '^Our coal supplies are so far from 
being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption 
shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years continues 
to prevail, our suppHes of anthracite coal will last but fifty 
years and of bituminous coal less than two hundred years." ^ 
Yet despite this threatening dearth, public foresight is so 
utterly at variance with our former free-handed American 
practice that thousands of our conservatives were found to 
be bitterly antagonistic to conservation. 

Intrinsically conservation is nothing but saving; it is 
the common lot against the looters. Though its opponents 

1 An exactly analogous development under similar circumstances and 
for like reasons is already taking place in our States and especially in our 
cities. Municipal ownership and operation of public services — the fur- 
nishing to the citizens of water, gas, electricity, traction services, etc. — 
seem inevitable as we progress towards a purification and democratization 
of municipal government. In 1908 American cities (each with a popu- 
lation of over 30,000) spent $275,000,000 on account of new properties, 
and the City of New York alone received over $18,000,000 from revenues 
of public service enterprises. American cities are far behind the cities 
of England and of the continent of Europe in everything partaking of the 
nature of civic prevision, and especially in the foresighted boldness which 
leads to an extension of civic functions. The trend, however, is in that 
direction. 

2 **The lowest estimate reached by the Forest Service of the timber 
now standing in the United States is 1400 billion feet, board measure ; 
the highest 2500 billion. The present annual consumption is approxi- 
mately 100 billion feet, while the annual growth is but a third of our con- 
sumption, or from 30 to 40 billion feet." Pinohot, Glfford, *' The Fight 
for Conservation." New York (1910), p. 14. 

' Pinehot, G., op. cit, p. 6. 



286 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

represent it as a dog-in=the-manger policy, as a plan to put 
our natural resources into ''cold storage/^ in reality con- 
servation is opposed, not to use, but to private appropria- 
tion, or at least to unfair, unequal, and wasteful appropria- 
tion. Conservation is merely a policy of protecting the 
public interest in our national forests, lands, mines, and water 
powers. 

Despite its seeming innocence, however, the poUcy of con- 
servation carries with it certain implications, disquieting not 
only to the hopeful spoilers of the public domain, but to 
many of their innocently eloquent coadjutors. In Alaska 
and elsewhere there are still some biUions of dollars of na- 
tional propert}^, and it now seems probable, in the Hght of 
our recently developed ''conservation sentiment," that the 
nation may lease this property for a valuable consideration, 
with the result that the people will share in the profits of 
exploitation. It is bad enough in the eyes of many honest 
citizens that the state have temporal possessions at ail; 
that it should actually make profits (thus lowering itself to 
the level of mere financiers) seems to our profit seekers in- 
congruous and almost immoral. But an issue even more 
dire remains in the background. If the state presumes to 
withhold national resources from private capital, then at 
some future time it may actually go farther. It may not 
only keep but develop its mines, forests, and water powers. 
It may go into the mining, lumbering, and electrical busi- 
nesses. It may compete with private business. 

The tendency of the government to go into such businesses 
is reenforced whenever regulation meets with failure. There 
are times when men feel that the nation is flouted and 
mocked by the trust; is only half -obeyed and is wholly 
blamed. Occasionally we tire of having the national gov- 
ernment act as chaperon to the trust.^ 

* From the point of view of the trust (especially if exposed to censorious 
tongues of investors or legislators), a certain amount of public chaperonage 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 287 

Where, however, regulation succeeds, where ends similar 
to those secured by government ownership may be obtained 
through the enforcement of uniform laws, it is often pref- 
erable to leave the business in private hands subject to 
pubhc control. Whether a particular business, affected 
with a pubHc interest, is better adapted to government opera- 
tion or to private operation with government regulation de- 
pends upon a number of conditions and is a question which 
the advocates of industrial sociahzation need not decide in 
advance. They may proceed as does the court, which 
indulges in wide-ranging obiter dicta, but cautiously decides 
each case upon its merits. 

What will ultimately decide in each case the question be- 
tween government operation and government regulation 
(when one of the two is desirable) will be the relative effi- 
ciency of the two methods. There are certain definite limits 
set to an extension of government ownership by the neces- 
sity of preserving the highest possible industrial efficiency.^ 
While the federal government is becoming yearly more 
efficient, and while the vast private monopolies often show 
the same industrial weaknesses as government does, neverthe- 
less there remains a certain advantage with the trust, owing 
to the greater play of the desire for profits, the greater 
elasticity of its arrangements, and the wider latitude given 
to its directors. Industrial autonomy, however clear its 
drawbacks, does at least produce a hard, alert, wide-awake 
industrial agent. The disadvantage of the trust is that it is 

is advantageous, since the presence of a duenna, however dull and deaf, 
covers a multitude of financial indiscretions. From the point of view of the 
*' regulated" corporation, there should be enough regulation to give con- 
fidence, but not enough to regulate. 

1 A socialized industry must have a considerable efficiency because the 
socialized democracy of which it is a pa.rt will be one with a high cost of 
maintenance. It will be a society which will do without child labor and 
without excessive toil of men and momen. It will spend enormous sums 
on education. A high standard of living maintained by a large population 
means inevitably an enormous national expenditure. 



288 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

too likely to sacrifice the public interest and even the interest 
of the investors to a series of private interests, which are 
excessively stimulated. The disadvantage of public owner- 
ship, on the other hand, is that it tends to develop too Httle 
that sharp private interest which leads to unobserved extra 
exertions and to a keener and more intelHgent applica- 
tion. 

A compromise between this pubhc interest and the private 
interest is sought to be effected by government regulation. 
The object of government regulation is to combine the ad- 
vantages of individual initiative and of public control. 

Against every such exercise of government regulation the 
theory of industrial autonomy is opposed. This theory 
maintains that, on the whole, the welfare of society will 
best be subserved by the largest practicable autonomy of 
business. It presupposes the least possible Umitation of 
a perfect freedom of contract ; of the right of a man to work 
when and where and how he will ; of the right of the man- 
ufacturer to run his business in his own way. In its crassest 
form the theory expresses itself in the sentence, '^Business 
must be independent of politics." 

What this engaging phrase really means is that society, 
politically organized (and to-day it is only politically that 
the whole of Society is democratically organized), should 
have no control over the industrial processes by which it 
lives. Industrial autonomy contemplates a state within 
a state; an industrial power dividing actual sovereignty 
with a political power. Industrial autonomy would subject 
society to business.^ 

^ There is a modified and weakened version of industrial autonomy 
expressed in such phrases as "the trusteeship of wealth" and assuming 
that our industrial leaders are holding and directing the wealth of the com- 
munity in the community's ultimate interest. Between this theory, how- 
ever, and the ordinary economic and legal tenets of its adherents, there 
are many uncomfortable contradictions. The "trustees" seem unwilling 
to be held to an accounting. They seem to believe that the rare qualities 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 289 

This theory, however, although once imposing, is now only 
a theory of shreds and patches. So many strands have been 
taken from the fabric that nothing but the most devoted 
bUndness can discern the original pattern. We have ridden 
roughshod over the sacred privacy of business. We have 
drawn ledgers and daybooks and bank presidents into the 
profane daylight. We have compelled employers to put 
guards on machinery (even when no one but the factory 
inspector wanted them). We have forbidden landlords from 
letting their empty premises to men who clamored at the 
gates. We have declared that a railroad rate may not be 
charged (even though the passenger stands ready to pay it) ; 
that a service must be improved, even though the shipper 
demands no improvement. Surely, at first blush, it seems 
reasonable to allow a seller to sell cheap. Nevertheless, a 
railroad corporation is forbidden to sell transportation be- 
low the market rate ; and a railroad president, who out of 
kindness gives (not sells) a pass to a friendly legislator, may 
for his complaisance go to jail.^ 

There was never a time when the government held entirely 
aloof from industry. Even in the palmiest days of Ameri- 
can individualism, there was always a certain expression of 
industrial socialization, since without some subordination 
of private initiative to public welfare, business itself is 
impossible.^ Then, as now, the penal law took cognizance 
of the rudiments of business socialization. There might be 
profit in the unrestricted sale of poison, but the disadvan- 
tages of such unregulated sales so manifestly overweighed 
any good arising from profits and wages that the business 
was either regulated or forbidden. 

of trusteeship may be inherited and devised. They do not fix any time 
at which the ward may be expected to arrive at an age of discretion. 

^ That is, he may theoretically go to jail, which is the pleasantest way 
of going. 

2 Even the California Vigilance Committees recognized that horse 
stealing was a business which "interfered with business." 



290 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Certain other industries in which there is supposed to be 
an excess of resultant evil over good have also been legally 
destroyed. For over half a century Maine has prohibited 
the manufacture and private sale of alcoholic beverages, 
and recently the country has been swept by a prohibition 
wave which in many towns, counties, and states has closed 
saloons and has annihilated businesses built up on the till 
then tolerated drink habit. Laws against gambling have 
diminished the value of race tracks, pool rooms, and tele- 
graph systems, while the prohibition of the sale of fire- 
crackers to our patriotic youth has meant fewer fires, fewer 
funerals, and slimmer profits. The principle is well estab- 
lished that the continued existence of many businesses de- 
pends, not on the demand for their product, but on the will 
of the general community. 

Despite the opposition, therefore, of those who believe 
that the state should hold ^^ hands off,^' the governmental 
regulation of business is steadily progressing in America. 
To an increasing extent the federal government undertakes 
the control of corporations. Especially in railroad legisla- 
tion, great progress has been made. The Interstate Com- 
merce Law of 1887 gave to a Government Commission the 
right, among other rights, to pass upon the reasonableness 
of rates, while forbidding rebates and discriminations by 
railroads in favor of persons or localities. The law of 1906 
still further strengthened the power of the federal govern- 
ment. The Interstate Commerce Commission was given 
the right to fix reasonable rates upon appHcation of a ship- 
per of an interested locality; in other words, was granted 
the enormous power of determining the price of all services 
rendered by railroads doing an annual business of two and 
one half billions of dollars. By a series of laws between 
1887 and 1910, the power of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission has been extended to all common carriers engaged 
in the carriage of oil (pipe fines) ; to telegraph, telephone, 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 291 

and cable companies; while the jurisdiction of the Com- 
mission has been extended as to through rates and joint 
rates, freight classification, switch connections, etc. The 
Commission has also been granted the right to make in- 
vestigations on its own motion, without awaiting the ini- 
tiative of an injured shipper. By the Act of March 2, 1893, 
railroads were obliged to equip their cars with automatic 
couplers and other safety devices, and by the law of April 
14, 1910, this act was supplemented by requiring railroads to 
equip their cars with sill steps, hand brakes, ladders, running 
boards, and grab irons, and the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission was empowered to designate the number, dimensions, 
location, and manner of application of these appliances. The 
Arbitration Act of 1898 provided for government mediation 
between interstate railroads and their employees. The Inter- 
state Commerce laws prescribe a uniform system of account- 
ing for all railroad corporations, a filing of annual reports, 
and an inspection by the Commission of all accounts, records, 
and memoranda. By the law of 1910, a special commission 
is provided to investigate the issuance of railroad stocks and 
bonds. Step by step the whole business of transportation 
and communication is more and more subjected in all its parts 
and in all its relations to a strict government regulation 
in the public interest. 

In the future we shall enormously increase the extent of 
regulation. Not only can we pursue an active social policy 
by means of the regulation of industry, but we can also so 
direct and restrain and guide the strong economic impulses 
of society as to make the product of industry not only larger, 
but more widely and more fairly distributed. Not only can 
we conserve our natural, and reserve our national, resources; 
not only can we retain for the people the franchises, grants, 
and valuable privileges which they now possess or which 
will come to them in the future ; but we can so regulate busi- 
ness as to prevent or lessen waste, internal friction, inter- 



292 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

business friction, the excessive fluctuations of seasonal 
trades, the wide fluctuations between good years and bad 
years, the duplication of plant or product, the production 
of useless or deleterious articles, the use of chicanery and of 
false representation, the extortions of monopoly, the unfair, 
unequal, and uneconomical distribution of the product, etc., 
etc. We should aim to secure at the lowest possible cost in 
effort the greatest possible production of articles worth 
consuming, and so distributed as to give the greatest possible 
satisfaction in their consumption. 

In the regulation of industry it is not necessary or desirable 
to pass laws where the personal interests involved, whether 
of employer or employed, of seller or buyer, of director, 
manager, promoter, or investor, are capable of accomplishing 
the same result. It is important that the democracy make 
use of all existing agencies for the attainment of its industrial 
program. 

One of the most representative and powerful of such 
agencies is the labor organization. The trade-union is not 
an urbane body of abnegating workmen united for the good 
of the employers or for that of the general community. It 
is not without fear, nor without reproach. Nor, for that 
matter, were the mailed barons who extorted Magna Charta 
from King John ; nor the tedious old councilors who secured 
the liberties of the towns ; nor the purse-proud Commons 
who won a measure of political democracy (for their own 
class) by withholding their money, as the trade-unionists 
to-day withhold their labor. In point of fact the trade- 
union is a group of workingmen pursuing their joint interests 
in much the same spirit as each member might be supposed 
to pursue his individual interests. But because those in- 
terests are joint and because in general they are the interests 
of people who are least represented in industry, the trade- 
unionists in what has been called their ''corporate egotism" 
are promoting industrial democracy. Actually, trade-union- 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 293 

ists are far better democrats than their immediate inter- 
ests necessitate, since their feeling of solidarity (except 
among a minority) stretches far beyond the boundaries of 
their trade. ^ 

While, however, it is not necessary to secure for working- 
men what their trade unions have already secured for them, it 
is desirable, in the interests of fairer-minded employers them- 
selves, to make uniform the progress already attained, and to 
enormously extend the scope of factory and labor legislation, 
in order to lessen hours, improve sanitary conditions of 
factories, decrease the mortahty and sickness in the trades, 
and generally to improve conditions which are as much a 
part of the workman's real wage as are the dollars which he 
finds in his pay envelope.^ 

1 In America the great mass of farmers, small tradesmen, and profes- 
sional men fail to sympathize with the trade-union through lack of an 
understanding of its fundamental aims and of the environment of the men 
who stand for those aims. The average outside individual objects to the 
trade-union, not because it insists on higher wages (which all are willing 
to concede — provided some one else pays them) but because it demands 
"the recognition of the union." Actually, however, in our more and more 
centralized industry this demand for recognition is the nearest possible 
approach to a real industrial democracy or even to a real industrial liberty 
for the workers. The kindly and often sympathetic opponents of the closed 
shop and of the recognition of the union appeal to the freedom of every 
individual, unionist or non-unionist, to make a fair contract with his em- 
ployer. It is perhaps a pleasanter ideal than collective bargaining with 
striking, picketing, and a compulsory membership in a union, but it is an 
ideal, which, for the present, is unattainable in many trades. 

2 Whether we shall within the near future prescribe minimum wages 
by law, as has recently been done for several trades in the United King- 
dom, will depend upon whether or not we attain the desired results by other 
means. It was once held that it was economically unthinkable — in 
fact, almost impious — to attempt to fix wages or prices by law. 
Within certain bounds this was true. If you make legal wages so high 
or legal prices so low that no incentive remains for production, then pro- 
duction will cease. But there is a wide margin of action between this and 
the establishment of definite minima of wages considerably above those 
in our worst-paid trades. Within that margin it is economically as pos- 
sible to regulate wages as to regulate hours or sanitary conditions. It is 



294 THE NEW DEMOCRACY: 

In some industrial situations, regulation must be plenary, 
detailed, and all-comprehensive. In other situations it may 
be more restricted. In still others, it may be limited to 
a mere insistence upon publicity of operations. 

To an increasing extent we are putting our trust in 
business publicity. It is a splendid means of unchaining 
public resentment or of inciting public approval. Knowledge 
permits potent economic forces to unbind themselves. Con- 
sumers, investors, voters, and the community in general are 
aided in their action by the certainty which pubUcity brings. 
Where publicity fails to restrain, a more thoroughgoing 
regulation is necessary. Where the thoroughgoing regulation 
is in prospect, publicity is an excellent antecedent. 

How much publicity is required depends upon the business, 
upon the extent to which it is invested with a public interest, 
upon whether there already exists a beneficent regulation by 
competition, upon the extent of the dangers which may flow 
from secrecy. Many men still claim that their particular 
businesses cannot be run with publicity. This is true only 
to the extent that a man whose business secrets are known is 
at a disadvantage in competition with a man whose business 
secrets are unknown. Publicity, doubtless, works often to 
the advantage of the large purse and the established firm, 
since those who are already strong have a relative advan- 
tage in securing, let us say, credit facilities. On the other 
hand, secrecy and the power to exert undue influence work 
to the advantage of the unscrupulous. 

Complete industrial socialization does not stop short at 
production and sale. It does not content itself with regu- 
lating the conditions under which articles shall be produced 
or the prices at which they shall be sold. It requires a 

as easy to forbid the manufacturers of cottons or woolens to pa3^ less than 
a defined scale of wages as it is to forbid the manufacture of counterfeit 
coins or the distilling of untaxed whisky. All that is required is a changed 
point of view in ourselves and our judges. 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 295 

reasonable and just distribution of the product of industry, a 
fair adjustment as between wages, profits, interest, rent, and 
the share of the state. It affects the redistribution of wealth 
after the ordinary distribution has taken place. It affects 
past accumulations, and the returns upon past accumulations. 

There are several ways in which the continued growth of 
enormous fortunes may be hampered, if not prevented. The 
social wealth to be created may be deflected to the commu- 
nity by a governmental acquisition of natural monopolies. 
During the next one hundred years American railroads, 
American mines, American forests, and American lands are 
hkely to increase stupendously in value. With any reason- 
ably large growth of population, these properties should in- 
crease to an amount which is entirely beyond anything in our 
experience, and is almost beyond our conception. By the 
gradual acquisition of such properties, or of strategic 
elements of such properties,^ the community could divert 
to itself a large part of this probable new wealth. It could 
accomplish this purpose by taxation, by the direct and in- 
creasing taxation of the unearned increment. The state 
might make a periodical valuation of all property invested 
with a public interest, as well as of all property to which in a 
marked degree a future unearned increment will adhere, and 
at regular intervals might take for itself a part (and a con- 
stantly increasing part) of the unearned increment which had 
accrued since the valuation immediately preceding.^ 

Theoretically there are no Umits to state action along these 
Unes. The sovereign state has a primordial, intrinsic, 
underlying right to all property, more valid in the final in- 
stance than the property right vested in the legal owner. 

^ If the nation owned the railroads and thus controlled transportatiqn 
rates, it could easily determine what part of the value of mines and forests 
should belong to it, and what portion should belong to the legal owners. 
The anthracite railroads determined the value of the anthracite mines by 
fixing the charges for the transportation of anthracite coal. 

2 See the English procedure under the Lloyd-George Budget. 



296 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

The right to tax involves the right to destroy. In no other 
great country of the world, moreover, would this residual 
claim of the nation be so capable of being enforced, since the 
property of American citizens is so largely invested at home. 
The British owner of South American gold mines may escape 
British taxation by removing to a foreign country, but in 
America the expatriation of the owner cannot effect the 
withdrawal of his capital. The property is here. To an 
overwhelming extent, the wealth of the nation is irrevocably 
and forever situate in this country. 

Even after the wealth has passed into the hands of indi- 
viduals it is not beyond the reach of the state. By progres- 
sive taxes on property, incomes, or inheritances (including 
taxation upon gifts inter vivos within a certain period prior 
to death), the state can do much towards preventing too 
insensate an accumulation of individual wealth. Theoreti- 
cally there are no limits to taxation along these lines. The 
nation might legally make itself sole heir to each of its 
citizens. 

Actually, no such extreme contingency is at all probable. 
The levying of a one hundred per cent inheritance tax would 
not meet with the approbation of more than an insignificant 
and ineffectual fraction of the people. A far more moderate 
tax would largely dry up the wells of enterprise ; and even an 
entirely reasonable, and from a social point of view a very 
low, inheritance or income tax is evaded systematically and 
flagrantly. State income taxes are of practically no value 
in reducing inequalities of wealth, since a man can acquire an 
exempting citizenship in a neighboring State far more easily 
than he can secure a new agent to look after his property. 

In the socialization of wealth by means of taxation, two 
inevitable tendencies are observable. The first of these is 
an increasing emphasis laid upon the national as distinct 
from the State governments, since the latter are not sufli- 
ciently formidable to cope with the gigantic private interests 



THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 297 

to which they may be opposed. The second is a change in our 
conception of the fundamental purposes of taxation. 

The prevalent theory in America during the last century 
was that taxation was to be levied for the sole purpose of 
raising government revenues. It should therefore be as 
little as possible, and should be divided among the people 
according to their abihty to pay. In other words, it should 
leave all citizens in the same relative position as it found them. 
We are now going over more completely to a conception of 
taxation as an instrument for the socialization of production 
and wealth ; as a means of changing the currents and direc- 
tions of distribution. In other words, the social, as well as 
the merely j^sca?, ends of taxation are held in view.^ 

With a government ownership of some industries, with a | 
government regulation of others, with publicity for all (to 
the extent that pubUcity is socially desirable), with an en- 
larged power of the community in industry, and with an 
increased appropriation by the community of the increasing 
social surplus and of the growing unearned increment, the 
progressive sociaHzation of industry will take place. To 
accomplish these ends the democracy will rely upon the trade- 
union, the association of consumers, and other industrial 
agencies. It will, above all, rely upon the state. 

1 The protective tariff (as opposed to the tariff for revenue only) had 
an avowed social end. So also taxes on the liquor trade, etc. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 

\r I iHE democracy seeks a complete control over govern- 
JL mental machinery and processes. It seeks to break 
the power of a politically entrenched plutocracy, to attain 
to a government by the people for the people. 

Without such democratic control of government there 
can be no permanent democratic control of industry. For, 
in ultimate analysis, we own our house, inherit our farm, draw ^ 
our profits, or obey the factory bell by grace (or command) of 
the political sovereign. Bequest, inheritance, private prop- 
erty, free contract, are subject to law. Law is legislative 
enactment, executive administration, judicial interpretation. 
The legislature, executive, courts, are, in democratic countries, 
immediately or finally, actually or potentially, the creatures 
of politics. They are the genii of the ballot box. 

In attempting to secure political control, the democracy 
proceeds along five paths. These paths are (1) the demo- 
cratic control of parties and of party nominations ; (2) the 
democratic control of elections ; (3) the democratic control of 
representatives already elected ; (4) direct legislation by the 
people • (5) increased efiiciency of the democratized govern- 
ment, y 

Control of political parties is the very beginning of po- 
litical democracy. The people are no longer content to vote 
for one of two candidates, collusively nominated by the allied 
corruption of two parties, and foisted upon the public, as a 
gambler ^^ forces'* a card upon a raw novice. In the interest 
of a popular election, a popular nomination is demanded. To 
choose between candidates, the people must choose the can- 
didates. 

298 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 299 

The legal regulation of parties, which has already pro- 
gressed far, has been made possible by one of those subtle 
changes in American political hfe, which, though they leave 
no mark upon constitutions, fundamentally alter the actual 
bases of government. The party, hitherto unrecognized by 
our constitutions and laws, was forbidden to place its nomi- 
nees upon the official ballot unless the party officers certi- 
fied such nominations to be genuine. ^^ Parties of a certain 
size, which had been given a privileged position for their 
nominees upon the ballot were, in return for this privilege, 
subjected to special restrictions. It was an easy step from 
permitting the two great parties to have their candidates 
placed upon the ballot (when certified by the party officials) 
to requiring that these nominations should have been made 
only in accordance with such rules and regulations as might 
be deemed necessary — in short, to prescribing in detail regu- 
lations governing the entire procedure of party primaries. 
The party ceased to be a purely voluntary association, and 
became a recognized part of the nominating machinery.'' ^ 

Legal control of party and primary, once initiated, was 
rapidly extended. It developed from a local or special regu- 
lation, optional with the party, to one which was general, 
State-wide, and compulsory. It led in a number of States to 
State- wide compulsory and universal direct primaries. 

Prior to the adoption in many of our States of direct pri- 
maries, the average political partisan cast his ballot, not for 
the ultimate candidate, but for men who chose men who chose 
the candidate. The result was often a complete travesty 
upon popular rights. Controlling financial interests ac- 
quired what was almost an acknowledged right to nominate 
the candidates. With direct primaries, on the other hand, 
the people directly select their own candidates. Where 
direct nominations are reinforced by laws against corrupt 

1 Merriam (C. Edward), "Primary Elections." Chicago (University of 
Chicago Press), 1909, p. 30. 



300 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

practices, the power of the majority over the making of 
nominations is correspondingly augmented. 

With each year the popularity of party regulation and of 
direct nominations becomes more evident and new means are 
devised to render the system simpler and more efficacious. 
^^The Connecticut democracy," says the 1910 State plat- 
form, '^favors the direct primary form of nominations in 
order that the people may select their own servants," and 
Republicans, Prohibitionists, Socialists, and others are in 
full accord. ''The Direct Primary Law," say the New 
Hampshire Republicans, ''has proved an unqualified success. 
The choice of delegates to national conventions should be 
brought under its provisions." Everywhere there is a de- 
mand for an extension, simplification, and improvement of 
the system of direct primaries. Utah Republicans (1910) 
clamor for a "direct primary law, by which all general offi- 
cers, including candidates for the United States Senate, may 
be chosen by vote by the whole people." Iowa Democrats 
and Minnesota Republicans ask for a lessening of the ex- 
penses attendant upon primary elections, while in other 
States the demand is made for the pubhcation of the expenses 
of all candidates for the nomination prior to the primary. 
New York Republicans insist "that the same safeguards 
should surround primary elections as have been shown to be 
effective in preventing repeating and frauds at general elec- 
tions." 

The chief object of direct primaries and of other proposals 
for the democratization of the party is to break up the alli- 
ance between corrupt business and corrupt poHtics. The 
question is often raised as to whether men of wealth (because 
of their greater hability to taxation or for other reasons) 
should not be accorded a larger power in the state than an 
equal number of penniless citizens. So stated, however, the 
problem is academic, for to-day, in all countries, men of 
wealth possess this advantage. Democracy is faced with the 






THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 301 

problem, not of according wealth a certain extra influence 
over legislation, but of so limiting and moderating that influ- 
ence as to permit an even partial effectuation of the will of 
the majorit}^ 

Much of this influence is ineradicable. Wealth gives 
leisure and intellectual opportunities. Money buys pub- 
Ucity, orators, advocates. There are always disinterested 
wealth worshipers, who find in the counsels of the mil- 
honaire grace, logic, and the sweetest reasonableness. We 
cannot legislate against the glamour of possessions. 

But the influence of wealth takes a more tangible form when, 
in the thick of electoral campaigns, our great corporations, 
not unsolicited, draw near to our party managers, and thrust 
into their expectant hands a modest contribution to the 
cause of justice and liberty. If we are not to be subdued 
by the plutocracy, we must beware these Greeks bearing 
gifts. We must control the party through its purse. 

Already great progress has been made. The reform of 
the federal Civil Service during the last thirty years has 
tended towards the moralization and the democratization of 
the party by reducing on this side the amount of blackmail 
which it is enabled to levy. Laws against the granting of 
free passes by railroads have put a stop to another form 
of party ' corruption. Finally, the prohibition of campaign 
contributions by corporations and the compulsory publica- 
tion by the parties of the source of moneys received and of 
the destination of moneys expended limit the scope of an 
evil financial influence upon the party. 

The democratization of the party and of the primary is 
chiefly desired because it leads to the democratization of 
elections. About the voting booth is fought the main 
battle between democracy and plutocracy. 

The democratization of elections no longer takes in the 
main the direction of an extension of male suffrage. For- 
tunately the federal Constitution left to the several States 



302 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the right to determine the qualifications of voters/ with the 
result that the religious and property tests of 1787, not de- 
scending to us as priceless heritages, were rapidly and suc- 
cessively abrogated. Forty years after the adoption of the 
Constitution, De Tocqueville could write ''Universal suf- 
frage has been adopted in all the States of the Union." 

This ''universal suffrage," debarring, as it did, women and 
Negroes, was an adult, male, white suffrage, and that in the 
main is what it is to-day. The voters, who in 1908 were 
qualified to vote for Taft or Bryan, would for the most part 
have been qualified in 1840 to vote for Harrison or Van 
Buren. In 1840, with few newspapers, bad roads, and a 
sparsely settled population, there were 14.1 voters to every 
hundred of the population ; in 1908, there were not quite 
17 voters per hundred. Although full woman suffrage has 
been established in six of our States, over 95 per cent of the 
adult women of the country are still without this full vote. 
The suffrage, extended after the Civil War to the Southern 
Negroes, has practically been withdrawn. 

Nor is there much likelihood that, in the near future, there 
will be any diversion of the democratic activities of the 
majority to the securing of a wider vote for Negroes. In 
the matter of Negro suffrage we have witnessed a sharp 
reaction from the noble optimism of fifty years ago. To-day, 
millions of men, discouraged by the dwindhng but still large 
residuum of Negro ignorance, discouraged by the passion 
which sweeps like a torrid wind over every phase of the 
question, seek to avoid the subject of Negro suffrage, as 
their grandfathers, the "finality men" of the fifties, sought 
to evade the subject of Negro slavery. There are sons of 
Northern soldiers who deplore the invidious distinction 
between black ignorance and white ignorance, between black 

1 Art. I, Sec. 11. While the federal government has the right of creat- 
ing citizens, the State governments, subject nominally to the 14th and 
16th amendments, have the right to determine who shall vote. 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 303 

grandfathers and white grandfathers, but who wish to post- 
pone the problem of Negro enfranchisement until other press- 
ing problems of our new democracy are in process of solution. 
Similarly many men, who have more than a platonic affec- 
tion for woman's suffrage, are too absorbed in the problem of 
increasing the potency of present voters to give more than a 
casual adherence to the cause of the women. '^Let us in- 
crease our vote," these men seem to say, ^'but above all 
let us make our present vote count." 

The first step in making the vote count was to see that it 
was counted. From the beginning ballot stuffing, the rifling 
(or steaUng) of ballot boxes, the adding of votes by the most 
fantastic processes of political arithmetic, had made of vot- 
ing an unmeaning, if rather an impressive, rite. Fortu- 
nately the task of remedying these evils was begun decades 
ago. Systems of preelection registration resulted in an 
heroic purging of a phantom electorate, and stopped the 
worst excesses of our '^plural" voters. The sweeping vic- 
tories of the AustraUan ballot moderated the widespread 
intimidation of voters and enormously reduced the scope of 
bribery. 

Even with these reforms, we are far from an absolutely 
democratic election. Apart from our gerrymandered elec- 
toral districts and our non-representation of large minorities 
— and even of majorities — we still halt behind our ideals. 
Progress, however, is being made. Our latter-day democrats 
are no longer satisfied with the husk of a meaningless vote. 
They do not wish to give their suffrages to candidates with- 
out knowing who they are, for a vote in ignorance is no vote. 
They do not wish to vote for a tail of insignificant nobodies 
upon the soaring kite of one conspicuous candidate. Finally, 
they desire no more electoral middlemen, but prefer to vote 
directly for their own representatives, even for United States 
senators, rather than to vote for men who will vote for these 
officials. 



304 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

That the American democracy is possessed of political 
capacity and resourcefulness is shown by the fact that a 
large proportion of our United States senators are already 
being elected by what is practically the direct vote of the 
people of their State. The Constitution of the United 
States distinctly prescribes that the Senate ^' shall be com- 
posed of two senators from each State, chosen by the Legis- 
lature thereof.^' ^ An amendment to this constitutional provi- 
sion has often been proposed, but the indirectly elected 
senators have not been precipitate in its welcome. In the 
meanwhile, a number of Western States have used the direct 
primary to attain this result indirectly. In these States 
any person seeking a nomination as State legislator may 
promise in advance that if nominated and elected he will vote 
for the people's candidate for United States senator irre- 
spective of personal preferences; or, by dechning so to pledge 
himself, he may commit political suicide. The result is that 
the recommendation of the people becomes binding upon all 
legislators irrespective of party, so that it occasionally hap- 
pens that a State legislature of one party elects a United 
States senator of the opposing party. With respect to this 
one function, the State legislators become mere delegates, as 
automatic in their actions as are the members of the Elec- 
toral College, who choose the President. The people elect 
their own senators.^ 

Even though the people nominate and elect their candi- 
date, how can they control him after election ? 

The old solution of this difficulty was to threaten the repre- 

1 Art. I, See. 111. 

2 Senators thus directly nominated have constituencies, but senators 
elected according to the old method have none. The State legrislators 
who elect the latter are politically short-lived members of assemblies, which 
lapse long before the six years' term of the Senate is over. Their repre- 
sentative quality is exeeedinglj' dubious, since in any modem sense of the 
phrase a man cannot be represented by any one over whose selection he 
does not exercise direct control. 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 305 

sentative that if he betrayed his trust he would never be 
reelected. This method was not eflScacious. The legisla- 
tor shrewdly interpreted the word '^ never" in a Gilbertian 
sense, as meaning ''hardly ever." The boss was near; the 
'' people" (to the pohtician the word was only a political 
expression) were distant. Many a roistering legislator 
preferred a short and a merry pohtical Ufe to a leaner career 
spread over a longer period. 

The new solution is the recall. The recall is like the long 
arm of coincidence. It is always ready. It is always 
threatening. In the heyday of his political triumphs, the 
legislator is in the valley of the shadow of the recall. The 
corrupt official is not even sure of immediate gleanings, since 
he may be cut down in his prime by the very people who have 
just elected him. 

The virtue of the recall, which has already been adopted by 
many American cities, lies in its ease of application. A 
certain fraction of the qualified voters (usually 25 per cent) 
may sign a petition for the removal of any elected officer. In 
the ensuing special election the official is a candidate (unless 
he specifically declines to run) ; but if he fails to receive a 
plurality, he is deemed removed from office as soon as the 
plurality candidate qualifies as his successor. 

For the time being the recall is in high favor with the 
democracy, and the demand for its adoption appears with in- 
creasing frequency in the platforms and protestations of the 
political parties. It is to be noted, however, that the de- 
mocracy does not everywhere proceed along identical lines, 
but that in different places and even in the same place it 
proposes alternative reforms for the same evil. It labors for 
the democratic control of the party, while simultaneously 
striving for its abolition.^ It asks at once for the democrati- 
zation of the representative system and for its displacement 

^ See the movement for nominations by petition, which is intended ab- 
solutely to circumvent the party and destroy its main use. 

X 



306 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

by a direct democracy, in which the people, rather than their 
representatives, will propose and enact legislation. The re- 
call, intended to increase the control of the people over sus- 
pected representatives, is likely to have a useful Hfe during 
a period of political transition, but it is hardly probable 
that it will be widely used if America goes over to direct 
democracy.^ 

There are two great complementary features of direct 
legislation, — the referendum and the initiative. 

The referendum is the people's veto. Under the referen- 
dum, bills passed by the legislature are referred to the people, 
either automatically or upon the demand of a certain propor- 
tion of the voters, and are accepted or rejected by the people. 
On the other hand, the initiative is a device by which a 
certain number of electors may propose a measure, which, 
with or without the approval of the legislature, must be 
referred to the people. The referendum enables the people 
to veto undesired legislation. The initiative enables the 
people to enact desired legislation. 

The fundamental principle of the referendum is that it is 
desirable that the voters have the opportunity of expressing 
themselves upon all problems which they consider of para- 
mount importance. Our present system is far from this 
ideal. In our presidential elections, there are always a score 
of issues and half a dozen potentially ^'paramount" issues, 
upon each of which each of the two great parties delivers 
itself in emphatic ambiguities. The American voter, as 
confused as a child at a four-ringed circus, seeks to answer a 
dozen questions and decide among a hundred candidates, not 
by writing a three-volume book, but by putting his mark 
under the Republican or the Democratic emblem. To state 
his preference on all these problems, 'Ho say aye or no to these 

1 In the Swiss cantons the recall (on a somewhat different basis) ,while 
it remains a possible weapon in times of emergency, is now rarely used, 
inasmuch as the referendum and the initiative make an appeal to it seldom 
necessary. 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OP THE DEMOCRACY 307 

particulars," he would have to borrow Gargantua's mouth. 
Instead — to change the metaphor — he can only wag his 
tail up or down. The result is that post-election reasons for 
victory and defeat ^'are as plentiful as blackberries," and the 
journals of the opposed political parties are farther apart 
in interpreting ^Hhe plain verdict of the people" than were 
party platforms or party candidates before election. 

The referendum gives the dumb god, Demos, a voice. 
The referendum, combined with the initiative, is the yes or 
no answer of the people to a definite question, propounded by 
the legislators or by the people. It is the power of the voters 
to propose laws and amendments to the State constitution ; 
to enact or reject such laws and amendments, and to confirm 
or nullify all legislative action. It is the ultimate appeal 
from the people^s representatives to the people. 

The adoption of the referendum and initiative tends to 
hmit the range and decision of our elected legislators. It 
tends to transform these legislators from representatives, 
possessed of personal, individual opinions (although elected 
because their opinions are in supposed accord with those of 
their constituents) into mere delegates ; into mere mechanical 
forecasters and repeaters of popular deliverances ; into par- 
rot-like, political phonographs. The recall, by keeping the 
popular thumb upon the recalcitrant lawgiver, acts in the 
same way. 

The result may not always be good. A high-spirited 
statesman, placed in a position where he may be checked, 
halted, thwarted — often, most unreasonably — where an 
appeal lies from his every action, where even his tenure 
depends upon his "giving satisfaction," is tempted to with- 
draw from the impotent eminence of office ; or, if he remain, 
he may suffer in initiative, courage, and self-esteem. If we 
adopt direct legislation with anything like logical consist- 
ency, we shall not have a Pitt, a Burke, a Webster, a Cal- 
houn in every State assembly and city council. 



308 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Without direct government, however, we have a plentiful 
lack of such notables, and we have blundered through a legis- 
lative century with lawgivers who were not alv/ays high- 
spirited, nor even invariably honest. If a measure of direct 
government does not improve our best legislators, it may ac- 
complish something equally important. It may improve the 
worst. 

Moreover, although men are crying that representative 
government is dead and that the occupation of the legislator 
is gone, the fundamental issue in America is in reahty not 
between representative and direct government (both of which 
systems have merits, inconveniences, and perils), but between 
a misrepresentative, plutocratic government and a democratic 
government, whether representative, direct, or mixed. Amer- 
ica is seeking the cure of a seeming democracy in real de- 
mocracy. If universal suffrage leads to ignorant voting, the 
cure is not a restriction of the suffrage, but an education of the 
voters. If the party controls politics, then the party must 
be democratized or destroyed. So with our so-called repre- 
sentative system. It must be democratized or destroyed. 

The referendum is not perfect any more than the secret 
ballot or the policeman's club is perfect. It is merely the 
best expedient in the present circumstances. With the 
referendum we shall doubtless enact into law a vast deal of 
sublimated nonsense — as we do now without the refer- 
endum. Even if the average quality of our laws were to be 
somewhat lowered by the referendum (which in America 
seems improbable), we might still accept that drawback 
because of the measure of insurance which the direct appeal 
to the people gives us against corrupt legislation and the 
grant of valuable franchises and concessions by men who have 
been paid their price. 

Under our so-called representative government, bribery 
becomes as safe and as venial as mere perj ury . Bribed men 
tell no tales ; bribers are equally reticent. When the con- 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 309 

sideration is a fee for ^'professional services," or the chance 
to be carried on a broker's books and win ''heads" or "tails" ; 
when bribery appears under as many disguises as the good 
M. Lecoq, our primitive, punitive laws, while necessary, are 
singularly innocuous. The incarceration of a few pitiable 
bribe takers (whose offense is mere unskillfulness) is as little 
consoHng to the robbed people as would be the spectacle of 
thieves rotting on gibbets, especially when the briber flour- 
ishes Hke a bay tree and the franchise (the occasion of the 
bribe) is gone forever. 

To prevent bribery in such cases, an ounce of referendum 
is worth a dozen State prisons. If no franchise may be 
given without the special consent of the people, it wonder- 
fully reduces the vogue and scope of financial corruption. 
For the briber is a frugal and a timorous man, who will not 
trust his argosies to unknown waves, and the vote of an al- 
derman, councilman, assemblyman, or State Senator — to 
go no higher — is of less value, when what he has to sell has 
"a string to it," and the unbuyable people hold the string. 

In their use of the referendum, the American people will 
be far more fortunate if they remember some of its defects and 
limitations. Its tendency (at least when separated from the 
initiative) is somewhat conservative.^ Its result depends 
upon the manner in which the legislative questions are pro- 
pounded. It is likely to weary the electors if too freely 
used. It is likely to be used by weak-kneed legislators to 
throw the burden of an awkward decision back upon the 
electors. Finally, it cannot accomplish the impossible. It 
cannot do alone what can only be accomplished by a com- 

* Under the Swiss federal referendum about two thirds of all laws 
submitted are rejected. The Swiss, both in federal and cantonal votings, 
tend to reject novel proposals, although a measure rejected once or twice 
or oftener may ultimately be accepted. The majority against a law may 
be merely a bundle of minorities, one group voting against one clause, an- 
other group against a second clause, and a third group against a third 
dause. 



310 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

bination of reforms. It cannot remake the people. If the 
people are a sleeping princess, waiting for the fairy prince 
of political saviors to awaken it, then the referendum will 
not avail any more than any other device of government. If 
the people do not want, they will not get. A referendum 
is no more valuable than a vote of an assembly, if the people 
do not vote at the referendum. 

Within the limits set by these conditions, however, the 
referendum, united with the initiative, has vast possibilities 
in our present state of politics. Not only may it check much 
of our residual corruption, not only may it directly give to the 
people a larger measure of political control than they now 
possess, but it may have the even greater merit of being a vast 
school of democratic education. If our referendum votes 
can be made educational campaigns, free from personalities, 
the result may be a large and direct contribution to political 
morality and education. 

When we analyze these changes — direct nominations, 
the recall, the initiative, the referendum — we find that 
their common characteristic is the directness of their appeal 
to the rule of the majority. This directness is part of a demo- 
cratic tendency to make all political processes simpler. Our 
legal and political, like our industrial, problems are becoming 
daily more intricate. Despite our more diffused education, 
therefore, it becomes increasingly necessary that our discon- 
certing difficulties should not be increased by obscurities, 
stumbling blocks, and handicaps in our pohtical machinery. 
Our governmental system must be as understandable as is 
compatible with efficiency and with a just representation of 
all classes. We must have a glass-house government ; a 
government standardized and systematized ; a government 
with double-entr>^ bookkeeping; with conspicuous heads; 
with the hne of responsibility leading straight and clear from 
the obscurest subofficial to the responsible chief. Obscurity 
works in the interest of special classes ; clarity in the interest 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 311 

of the people. If the people are to rule, they must not be 
made to waste their vision, enthusiasm, or indignation in 
vain attempts to determine who is to blame or what it is all 
about. 

This simplicity of political arrangements is necessary to 
governmental efficiency, without which no great extension of 
governmental functions is possible. If an oligarchic but 
efficient industry is opposed by a lax and inefficient govern- 
ment, the former will easily escape effective regulation. If 
factory inspectors, tax receivers, and ^'plain-clothes men^' 
accept bribes; if civil servants buy their places with contribu- 
tions to political parties; if the government, losing money on 
all its ventures, spends two dollars where only one dollar was 
spent before, the industrial oHgarchy will be safe, because the 
people will prefer present evils to those which a corrupt and 
inefficient government might introduce into business. 

Years ago our public administration was so dishonest and 
so incomparably inefficient that private business did not 
anticipate any great popularity for the governmental regu- 
lation of industry.^ To-day things are different. Thanks 
largely to the incentive of business men, government is 
becoming quite reasonably efficient. 

When the plutocracy began to organize the country's 
business, it found that it was also necessary to improve 
certain phases of government. To compete with British and 
German manufacturers, we needed a better consular service. 
For the sake of business, we needed better fire and police 
protection, better sanitation, better administration of the 
wharves, a better service generally. Efficiency, however, 
is a contagious virtue, and inefficiency, which lives com- 
fortably by itself in pleasant dark places, cannot co-exist 
with efficiency. One branch after another of the civil 
service of nation, State, and city improved. Red tape, 

^ Thirty years ago we did not know how corrupt private business was, 
nor from what respectable sources official corruption came. 



312 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

goose quills, and a bewigged and pompous ceremonial gave 
way to counting machines, public automobiles, and an easy 
and rapid dispatch of public business. Intolerable condi- 
tions became in some governmental places tolerable; in 
some places, fairly good ; in some, excellent. 

To-day the administrative efficiency of our federal govern- 
ment is as much superior to what it was a generation ago, as 
is the efficiency of the locomotive of 1911 to that of the loco- 
motive of 1876. The superlatively efficient Standard Oil 
Company probably does not conduct its business with 
truer economy and efficiency than have been manifested 
by the federal government in the construction of the 
Panama Canal. We are carrying out our great irrigation 
works, and conducting (in connection with them) a manifold 
series of auxiliary businesses with a reasonable degree of 
success. Our post office service, though somewhat hobbled 
by holdovers (both men and methods), compares neverthe- 
less in net efficiency with the great express companies.^ 
Our national forests are admirably run; our federal De- 
partment of Agriculture (which is a great nonprofit-earning 
business) is conducted as well as the average University, or 
private philanthropic institution. The same is true of many 
branches of our State and local governments. 

The improvement in our civil service alone marks a great 
step forward. A quarter of a century ago, one of the most 
convincing arguments against a proposed government 
operation of railroads was that the admission of half a 
million railroad employees would still further demoralize our 
corrupt civil service. In 1911, with almost two million 

1 Comparisons between the rival efficiency of government, and private 
businesses cannot be made solely on the basis of profits. The government 
willingly pays higher wages than it is compelled to pay. It willingly gives 
a better service than it is compelled to give. It gladly conducts a large 
part of its business at a fiscal loss, but at a social gain. On the whole, the 
people of the United States can better pay high wages to government 
employees than allow exorbitant profits to promoters of express companies. 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 313 

steam railroad employees, this particular difficulty seems 
less formidable. There are everywhere signs of an increasing 
recognition by our more democratic governments that to 
fulfill their functions they must be efficient. The last 
twenty years have witnessed an enormous advance in the 
sheer efficiency of our local governments. Bureaus of 
Municipal Research point out improvements in municipal 
administration; annual congresses of municipal officials 
enable comparative studies to be made of municipal 
methods.^ In many localities we have efficient govern- 
ment of cities by small commissions, democratically elected, 
invested with great power and with clear responsibility, 
and subject to immediate recall by an adverse ma- 
jority. 

All this efficiency is important, but a still greater efficiency 
on a far higher plane is necessary if we are to democratize 
our industrial and political life. Our political machinery — 
national. State, and local; legislative, executive, administra- 
tive, and judicial ; constitutional and extraconstitutional — 
our whole political machinery in all its parts must be adapted 
to all the changing purposes of government. It is of small 
advantage that our legislators are democratically nominated, 
elected, and controlled; it is of small advantage that each 
separate government wheel turns with a noiseless ease, if 
the system as a whole is ill-geared. If in a government 
there is a lack of proper coordination among parts; if 
certain parts are weak which should be strong, and certain 

1 It is important that efficiency be not identified with lessened govern- 
mental expenditures, with a cheeseparing and a special care for the preser- 
vation of the governmental lead pencils and the soap and towels in the 
public offices. In these days of rapidly expanding governmental functions 
the bark of "the watchdog of the treasury" is not the epitome of political 
wisdom. The true policy is fairly well stated in the (1910) Plp.tform of 
the New York State Independence League : "While emphasizing the im- 
portance of a business-like and economical administration, we believe that 
the State should unhesitatingly expend whatever is necessary for the oom» 
plete performance of its functions." 



314 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

parts are strong which might be weak; if between State 
and nation there are jurisdictional disputes; and if there 
are jurisdictional disputes between legislative and judiciary; 
if there is fluctuation where there should be stabihty, and a 
stiff unchangeability where there should be elasticity and 
change, — if there are these or any of these, then no true 
efficiency can be maintained. 

Of all these elements of national inefficiency the delimita- 
tion of powers between the federal and the State govern- 
ments is the most patent. Democratic reforms are often far 
more difficult to effect than in England or in France because 
in the United States there may be a conflict of author- 
ity between State and federal jurisdictions. Labor laws 
which in England or France would be passed by the national 
legislature and become law for the whole country must here 
be enacted, not by the federal government, but by each 
State for its own residents, and a law passed in any such 
State may be declared unconstitutional because in violation 
of the federal Constitution. 

We are increasingly perceiving that many of our problems 
are national problems and cannot be solved by any govern- 
mental unity less than the nation. Regulation of interstate 
railroads has long since passed beyond effective State action, 
and the regulation of our great industrial corporations is 
similarly beyond the scope of State action. In the matter 
of the conservation of our natural resources, in the matter 
of the taxation of incomes and of inheritances, even in the 
problem of education and of certain forms of labor and fac- 
tory legislation, we should be far better off for an extension 
of our federal powers. 

By this it is not meant that we should surrender our 
federal system of "an indissoluble union of indestructible 
States," or that we should reduce those States to the status 
of counties or d6partements. There are many advantages 
to our present system. It permits the more progressive 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 315 

States to go forward without waiting for the consent of the 
less advanced States.^ It permits us to maintain poHtical 
experiment stations, where new ideas may be tried out 
quickly and on a small scale. It enables us to make our 
mistakes cheaply. But it is also used to halt progress 
and to maintain reactionary districts from the impact 
of democratic forces. It is used as an obstacle to progress, 
when men who want no conservation plead for State as 
against national conservation. It is used to prevent national 
action and to thwart State action, and to delay each in the 
supposed interest of the other. 

To an extent, our government already answers to the needs 
of the people, but it does so ineffectually, like a clumsy, 
ancient engine which utilizes only one or two per cent of the 
power applied to it. More or less we can obviate the evils of 
our present imperfect federal system by creating new extra- 
legal agencies, such as the house of governors, or other 
means of creating a unanimous action by a large num- 
ber of States. Progress towards a really effective and 
specialized democratic government can be made in other 
ways. We can establish a larger measure of municipal 
home rule; we can reform our legislative methods in the 
House of Representatives ^ and elsewhere ; we can more 
completely separate local from national politics, and we can 
increase our independent voting both in municipal and in 

* Under a system of uniform, contemporaneous legislation by a group of 
progressive States, a more rapid advance can probably be made than could 
be made by waiting for the larger political body — the nation — to move. 

2 The attempt to reform the rules of the House of Representatives led, 
in 1910, to a severe conflict between house insurgents and house "stand- 
patters." It is interesting to reflect that the rules of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, which can be changed at any moment by a vote of a majority 
of the House (without the concurrence of Senate or of President) have 
probably done more within later decades to obstruct democratic progresf 
than has the unequal distribution among the States of senators, although 
the latter cannot (theoretically) be changed against the will of any State 
even by the process of constitutional amendment. 



316 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

national elections. Finally, within the States we can secure 
proportional representation.^ 

Much of our progress towards a complete majority govern- 
ment might be made without any change in the federal 
Constitution. Sooner or later, however, the growing political 
democracy will be aborted and halted by the inelasticity 
of that document, and in the time to come a demand will 
be made for fundamental constitutional transformations 
and adjustments. 

Upon the manner in which this demand is made and met 
will depend much of the future political history of the United 
States. If the Constitution will permit itself to be changed 
to meet the changing needs of the nation, it will grow in 
dignity and prestige. If, on the other hand, it does not 
change, or if it changes too slowly to permit political trans- 
formations to be made with a minimum of friction, then it 
will be broken, violently distorted, or swept aside. 

It would be a mistake on the part of those who wish the 
Constitution to remain forever as it is to count too much 
upon its popularity as an obstacle to change. That the 
document is stupendously popular is evident. But the 
Constitution will remain popular only so long as it permits 
the progressive attainment by the people of the things which 
they desire. The veneration in which the Constitution has 
so long been held, has largely been due to our prosperity 

» So completely are we wedded to the idea of a political representation 
of geographical districts instead of a representation of classes, and of like- 
minded groups of men generally, that we do not, as a rule, even consider 
the advisability of adopting proportional representation. Under that sys- 
tem, if there are one hundred legislators to be elected by one million voters, 
then any ten thousand voters, no matter where situate, would be qualified 
to elect their candidate. The advantage of proportional representation 
is that it gives representation, not only to the minority, but also, and even 
more effectually, to the majority. It puts a stop to gerrymandering, and 
by making legislators more truly representative of like-minded constituents, 
it allows men of conviction to take the places of our present ecleotio and 
•hrinking representatives. 



THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OP THE DEMOCRACY 317 

during the constitutional period, just as the late Queen 
Victoria owed much of her popularity to a similar cause. 
Like the Republican Party the Constitution has profited 
by good crops and a boundless continent. If, however, 
it comes to be believed that whatever the plutocracy wants 
is constitutional and whatever we want is unconstitutional, 
— there will follow an astounding deliquescence of the 
wisdom of our ancestors. 

For the time being, the Constitution will probably change, 
as it has changed during the last century, by process of 
interpretation. Nine men, seated in the Supreme Court 
at Washington, hearing more or less distinctly the clamor of 
a hundred million people outside, judging more or less wisely 
of the constitutional needs of these hundred millions of 
people, will continue under the fiction of interpretation to 
adapt our century-old Constitution to our present needs. 
Upon these nine politically irresponsible men will rest a 
tremendous moral reponsibility. It is possible for them 
by a few progressive judicial decisions to democratize the 
Constitution. It is equally possible to evoke a dangerous 
constitutional conflict by a few reactionary decisions. 

It is to be hoped that as the years roll on the nine Supreme 
Court judges, making and remaking a Constitution for a 
hundred million people, will more and more feel the impact, 
the psychological attraction, of all these millions. It is to 
be hoped that the stamp of the popular will may be stamped 
on these nine minds as it is stamped upon the minds of 
our presidential electors, upon our western legislators as- 
sembled to elect a United States senator, and to a less degree 
upon the minds of our Congressmen and of the President of 
the United States. We can reach to the Supreme Court 
only through a series of channels. But already it is evident 
that Presidents are becoming increasingly anxious to appoint 
justices who will meet with the approval of the nation, 
and that the senators, who confirm the appointments are 



318 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

not entirely unsusceptible to similar influences. Direct 
election of senators should mean more democratic senators ; 
more democratic senators should mean more democratic 
Supreme Court justices ; more democratic justices should 
mean a more democratic Constitution. 

All this is progress, but it is the progress of the child, 
not of the adult nation. The Constitution should be re- 
vised by the people. A radical revision of the Constitution 
by a special constitutional convention, such as was contem- 
plated by the document itself, would be one of the greatest 
single steps towards establishing a political democracy in 
the United States. 

An alternative step, perhaps even wiser, would be, not a 
complete transformation of the document, but a mere change 
in the method of amendment, a change which would make 
future amendment easier and would give the power of 
proposing and of adopting amendments to the people, rather 
than to legislatures. State and federal. 

Herein lies the scope of the constitutional initiative and 
referendum, which transcends the scope of the legislative 
initiative and referendum as the Constitution transcends a 
law. In changing our federal Constitution we should 
adopt a system similar to that adopted by the far more demo- 
cratic federal republic of Switzerland. A given number of 
qualified voters, let us say one or two millions, should be 
allowed to propose any constitutional amendment, which 
should then be voted upon (on a single day) by all the 
qualified voters of the nation, and should be considered 
carried and should be made a part of the Constitution of the 
United States if accepted by a majority of all the voters, 
as well as by a majority in a majority of all the States. 

Even with a constitution sensitive to the popular will, 
even with the referendum, initiative, and all the instruments 
and weapons of a pure pohtical democracy, it would not 
follow that legislation would be in the mterest of the people. 



TH^ POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 319 

The referendum enables the people to decide. It does not 
make them decide wisely. 

Under a political democracy the people may vote in their 
own despite. They may be jingoistic, imperialistic, reaction- 
ary. They may vote themselves a king, with or without a 
title. They may break into warring factions, and, in the 
absense of unity, allow real sovereignty to slip through 
their fingers. A nation in breechcloths, but without a 
king, is not a democracy. Neither is a nation with a 
twentieth century political democracy, but without the 
mind and the will to rule itself. 

The end goal of the democracy is thus a social goal. It 
is the improvement, physical, intellectual, and moral, of 
the millions who make up the democracy. It is such an 
advancement and increase of the progressive masses that 
the gains made on the political and industrial fields may be 
increased, retained, and wisely utilized. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 

THE social goal of the democracy is the advancement and 
improvement of the people through a democratization 
of the advantages and opportunities of hfe. This goal is 
to be attained through a conservation of life and health, 
a democratization of education, a sociahzation of con- 
sumption, a raising of the lowest elements of the population 
to the level of the mass. 

The most elemental phase of this social policy is conserva- 
tion. The phrase ''the conservation of human resources" 
has attained a considerable popularity because of the vogue of 
the analogous policy of the conservation of natural resources. 
But the word ''conservation'^ is too narrow, for the demo- 
cratic ideal is not only to maintain, but vastly to increase 
and improve, the life, health, intellect, character, and social 
qualities of the citizenry. 

This policy does not consider life solely from a quan- 
titative standpoint. The demand for large populations 
is not democratic in origin. It is the despot who wants 
soldiers; the business prince who wants cheap labor; the 
jingo who believes in a swaggering, fighting nation. In 
democratic countries, on the other hand, a decrease in the 
birth rate has accompanied an improved education, a more 
diffused comfort, and a rise in the general standard of living. 
The more advanced the country, the section, or the social 
class, the more marked in general has been the tendency 
away from the old blind propagation of the species. The 
democracy does not desire that life be given to so many that 
the gift becomes of no value. It does not wish to see a 

320 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 321 

swarming population pressing upon the means of subsistence. 
It desires a full life for all who are born, but it does not 
measure national success by the numbers who are born. 

This distinction between the number and the value of 
lives explains one of the most curious anomalies of modern 
democratic policy. Although the democracy is beginning 
to desire rather a lessened than an increased birth rate, it 
demands absolutely that every child born shall have a chance 
to live. The basis of democratic strivings toward human 
conservation is an ethical belief in the sanctity of human life, 
and the desire for an equality in this universal possession. 
Life is the one thing which all have in common ; and while 
the expectation of life is by no means equal as between 
social classes, it is far more equal than is property, education, 
political power, or economic opportunities. 

How far we still are from any real equality even in the 
probable years of our lives is seen in our statistics of accidents 
and of preventable diseases, which reveal our social reckless- 
ness toward our very poor. It is the poor who die young. 
It is the poor who die of preventable diseases, or are killed 
by accidents and by dangerous occupations and poisonous 
foods. When society fails in its duties, the poor die. And 
the more the poor die, the more poor there remain. 

To save life involves a social intelligence and a social 
conscience. Our ideas of protecting life are as yet rudi- 
mentary. We do not permit a man to put arsenic in his 
neighbor's coffee nor a stiletto in his neighbor's side, but we 
have only begun to prevent the selling of ^^ embalmed beef" 
and other deadly foods, and we still permit the kiUing of 
workmen and workwomen by means of lead, phosphorus, and 
unfended machinery. We do not allow a man to contract to 
commit suicide, but we not only permit, we actually pre- 
suppose, a contract by which the workman in a dangerous 
occupation assumes the '^ordinary risks" of the trade. As 
for the tens of thousands of infants who annually die of 



322 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

bad milk and bad houses, we do not even know that they die 
needlessly. 

A large part of our unprevented mortality is due to our 
fearful national heedlessness. Just as for years we have 
sacrificed thousands of lives to our Fourth of July barbarities, 
so we have annually sacrificed other thousands to our desire 
to cross railway tracks, and to our general willingness 'Ho 
take a chance." But behind this recklessness, individual 
and social, there remains the desire of individuals to profit 
at the expense of the people, whether the price is paid in 
life, or in health, comfort, and money. The railroad runs its 
locomotives through the heart of a metropolis, and only 
accepts automatic couplers after years of obstruction. The 
manufacturer insists upon leaving his machinery unguarded ; 
the great mining company upholds its right to neglect the 
most elementary and least costly of safety devices. In our 
mines, railroads, and factories we kill two, three, and five 
times as many workmen per thousand as do other nations ; 
and in many industries and in many States we do not even 
trouble to count the slain. We are still unwilling to pay for 
the complete sanitation of a city, for the uprooting of tuber- 
culosis, for the distribution of proper milk to infants, or for a 
civilized housing policy which would lessen the disgraceful 
mortality of certain districts of our large cities. 

Everywhere we are halted in our progress towards the 
conservation of the fives and health of all the people by 
the obstruction of interested persons and by considerations 
of cost. We save pennies to individuals and cause society to 
lose pounds by our petty savings of money at the expense of 
life and health. On a mere calculation of dollars and cents, 
it is a foolish extravagance to allow a baby to die for lack 
of a few dollars' worth of pure milk, or to allow an expensively 
bred workman to die for lack of a few hundred dollars spent 
in protection and prevention.^ But we do not yet reafize 

* Every preventable death is a reflection upon the good will or the in- 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 323 

that it is we as a community who pay for these deaths, al- 
though we only too clearly reaUze that it is we who pay for 
their prevention. 

In contrast with our old attitude of tolerance for social 
assassination, however, we are now beginning an energetic 
campaign of human conservation. We are instituting ex- 
cellent and, in many places, free hospital and dispensary 
service. We are making nurse and doctor public servants, 
and are introducing them into the pubUc schools. We are 
fighting typhoid fever with uncontaminated water supplies, 
and tuberculosis not only by a direct attack but with im- 
proved housing and factory conditions. We are improving 
city and State Boards of Health and are striving for a 
National Board of Health, which shall supervise the general 
health conditions of the nation. In our cities we are pro- 
viding pubhc parks, public recreation centers, pubUc baths. 
Our city and State authorities are doubling the protection 
of the milk, meat, and other foods of the people. Our fac- 
tory legislation and our laws regulating dangerous occupa- 
tions have resulted in a considerable saving of life, while 
our laws against cliild labor have had an enormously bene- 
ficial effect. All of which changes, together with a rapid 
advance in sanitary science and a vast improvement in the 
standards of living of the people, have resulted in a rapid de- 
cline in the death rate, especially in the cities. 

After all this progress, however, we are still only in the 
beginning of our democratic campaign of Hfe-saving. To 
conserve life and health, society must enormously increase 
its efforts along present fines and must open up new routes 
of progress. We must organize the campaign on State (and 
national) fines. Sooner or later we must insure our popu- 

telligence of the community which suffers it. Society should regard every 
death below the age of sixty as a subject of serious thought. There should 
be a coroner's inquest when a man dies of typhoid fever or lead poisoning. 
Dying young should be forbidden by law. 



324 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

lations against sickness, accident, and invalidity, and must 
devote enormous sums to the prevention of these calamities. 
The advantage of an obligatory, universal state insurance 
is not only that it changes one's unknown individual lia- 
bihty for a known social liability, but also that it compels 
society to recognize that it itself is the loser from each pre- 
ventable death and each preventable sickness. When the 
State of New York makes itself financially responsible for 
the health and lives of ten or twenty millions of citizens, it 
will be wilUng to spend money to prevent sickness and 
death. 

To secure the health and lives of the people we must 
socialize the business of health-keeping. It would pay us 
in the higher efficiency and better tone of the community 
to spend annually hundreds of millions of dollars of public 
money upon the prevention and cure of disease. Once we I 
regard the health of the population as a social instead of 
merely as an individual asset, when we come to consider 
the maintenance of the citizen's health as a social duty 
rather than as a personal prerogative, we shall have 
enormously advanced towards a healthy and prosperous 
community.^ 

The lessening of the infantile death rate (combined with 
a lessening of the birth rate) is a sign that we are already 
making progress in the conservation of life. The birth of 
babies who die in infancy is a pitiable social waste. If a 
high death rate of babies meant a selection of the socially 
fittest, if it were a subtle eugenic plan of nature, it might 
be worth all it costs in misery. In present circumstances, 
however, the death of babies is as arbitrary as decimation. 

* Our poverty, while a cause of illness, is largely a consequence of illness 
and of early (preventable) death. Much of the misery of the great cities 
affects the widows and orphaned children of men who died young, the 
wives and children of sick men, and people of both sexes and all ages who 
have become permanently debilitated as a result of illnesses which need 
never have been contracted. 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 325 

The economic position of the baby, not its inherited qualities, 
constitutes its chief danger or immunity. 

Like the newborn infant, so the growing child is accorded 
an ever widening protection. Instruction becomes com= 
pulsory and universal. The free school, through the kin- 
dergarten, reaches out towards babyhood and, through the 
high school, to adolescence. The state, as guardian, in- 
creases its authority, as the paternal authority weakens. 
Wide programs of child welfare work are proposed and pro- 
gressively executed. The greatest revolution of the last 
half century is the revolution in the status of the child. 

Similarly, in the interest of human conservation we must 
rectify or totally destroy our parasitic trades. There are 
two more or less distinct classes of parasitic industries ; those 
which prey upon other industries, and those which prey upon 
human life. An industry is parasitic in this latter sense in 
proportion as it directly or indirectly increases sickness, 
produces deterioration, or shortens life. 

It is in the sweated trades that the labor of women and 
children (especially of immigrant women and children) is 
most harshly exploited. In the making of artificial flowers, 
in the sorting of rags, in the fabrication of many articles of 
clothing, the work is carried on under the worst possible hy- 
gienic conditions for a derisory wage, in the interest of a 
cheap product. 

From the point of view of society this cheapness is dear- 
ness and sheer wastefulness. It would be wiser to pay a 
few cents a gross more for our artificial flowers. It would be 
cheaper to pay om* bounty in dollars than in the life and 
health of the workers. 

To cure the evils of parasitic trades we must have re- 
course to legislation. We cannot trust that the exploiters 
(themselves for the most part exploited) will desist from 
their profits. A parasite which had compunctions about 
inconveniencing its host would be likely to succumb. 



326 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

What is necessary is a wide extension both in the appli- 
cation and in the principles of our factory laws. We must 
extend the signification of the word ''parasitic." We must 
come to regard as parasitic, not only those industries which 
destroy women and little children, but also those which, 
though paying high wages, have an unnecessarily high mor- 
tality or morbidity rate, and also those which, because of 
long hours, excessive strain, or for other causes, do not permit 
a reasonable development of the personahty of the workers. 
We must regulate factory conditions for men, women, and 
children, and we must so change our legal traditions as to 
permit the state to establish, not only maximum hours of 
labor of men, but also, in the worst-paid trades, minimum 
wages. 

The conservation of human resources is a step towards 
the equalization of the chances of life and health of the ; 
citizens. The democratization of education is a step to- 
wards the equalization of the chances of intellectual 
development. 

A progressively diffused education is necessary to the 
maintenance of the democracy. A political democracy may 
be reactionary in its industrial and social policies, and the 
people may secure control both of the state and of industry 
without knowing enough to turn such control to their ad- 
vantage. To maintain itself, the democracy must use its 
powers to still further educate and strengthen itself. 

There was a time, in the optimistic days preceding the 
French Revolution, when men believed that no long training 
would be necessary to teach men to rule. The people would 
attain their full intellectual and moral stature as soon as po- 
litical tyranny was destroyed. Democracy was in its youth. 
It was violent, hopeful, moody. It saw visions. It had a 
touching faith in many beatitudes. It believed that all 
men were by nature good ; that all ills were due to civiliza- 
tion — to law, government, titles of nobility, small clothes, 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 327 

and small talk. Civilization, being but an excrescence 
upon nature, might be excised. The bitter, million-year-old 
world would become young and sweet again. The masses 
of the oppressed would become wise and temperate men 
ruling themselves by the light of reason. 

Unfortunately the hopes of the eighteenth-century philos- 
ophers were not entirely reahzed. Skulls are desperately 
obstinate things, and unreasonable convictions have a woe- 
ful longevity. Ignorance, superstition, reaction, crushed to 
earth, rose again — and again. The peasants, after emanci- 
pation, did not become philosophers. 

Our more sober democracy of to-day has a less absolute 
faith in the immediate perfectibihty of man. It reahzes 
that men^s minds change slowly, and that much education 
and much time are required. We realize, to-day, that just 
as the people have not all the vices, so also they have not all 
the virtues, ascribed to them. They are not so arbitrary, 
undisciplined, ignorant as was predicted. Nor are they so 
public-spirited. The average man does not cheerfully give 
up his holiday to serve on a jury, and the average housewife 
is more anxious to secure a good servant than to have the 
Panama Canal finished. The people are often too patient 
or too passionate. They are often too belligerent. 

The most diverse classes are united upon the policy of 
educating the whole people because upon that education 
depends the safety of the various groups which constitute 
the nation. The very possibility of misrule by a passionate, 
accidental majority is the saving menace of a democracy. 
It is this menace which crumbles our intellectual snobbery 
and abases our intellectual pride. For, if we are to have 
imiversities, and the universities are to receive public funds, 
not only must the learned come from their cloisters (as to 
so large an extent they have already done), but they must 
appeal to a population sufficiently intelligent and cultured 
to appreciate learning and culture. In a democracy, wherein 



328 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

a real political power (including a real control over industry) 
extends downwards to the masses of the people, it is mani- 
festly impossible to give a monopoly of any of the benefits 
of life to any one class. For the sake of the cultured, the 
masses must have the opportunities of culture. 

Not only is an extension of education indispensable to 
the maintenance of a socialized democracy, but it is precisely 
in a democracy that education is most necessary to a high 
national efficiency. Education reacts powerfully upon the 
production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. There 
is no private industry in the United States which pays as 
high dividends as does the business of furnishing the proper 
education to the proper persons. If the government were 
annually to give free agricultural and industrial instruction 
to hundreds of thousands of youths (and were actually to 
pay them to attend school), the increase in the productive- 
ness of the farms and factories would more than pay for 
the expenditure. 

We have already taken many steps towards the sociali- 
zation of education, but we are still far from the ideal of a 
society in which all forms of education are entirely accessible 
to all qualified citizens. We should have free education 
from kindergarten to university for all children and youths 
who are willing and able to follow the courses, and we should 
have scholarships and scholars^ pensions for all capable 
scholars who have not the means to abstain from gainful 
work. All this would of course cost money, especially if 
we not only increased the quantity, but raised the quality, 
of our education, but there is no better way in which the 
increased wealth of the country could be invested.^ 

1 Many pressing educational reforms, such as the increase in the number 
of teachers, the raising of the standards of teachers, improvements in 
methods and equipment, are chiefly held back by considerations of coat. 
Whether or not the federal government, with its far greater resources, 
should aid in the extending of school facilities in poor districts is a question 
which deserves far more consideration than it has received. It is un- 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 329 

The higher education of the multitude, the granting to 
men who will become farmers, carpenters, typesetters, 
perhaps even hodcarriers, of what would be an equivalent 
of a high school (or even of a modern college) education, 
would create a revolutionary force in the community of 
astounding power and magnitude. It would be a force 
which would act increasingly until our society had become 
entirely different from any in the history of the world. 
Not only would such an absolute democratization of all 
forms of education enormously hasten economic and poUti- 
cal control by the masses, but it would render that control 
permanent and beneficent. 

The future education of the masses, however, should 
not be the traditional, Procrustean, unrelated, and undiffer- 
entiated education of yesterday, but an education which 
fully equips the child for his industrial, political, and social 
life. For too long the school has been half asylum, half 
penitentiary. For too long it has stood alone in irrelevant 
isolation, knowing neither factory nor farm, neither kitchen 
nor voting booth. For much too long it has been a place 
where ignorance has taught ignorance, where individuahty 
has been weeded and crushed out. 

The progress already made towards a differentiated, 
modernized education, bearing upon all essential phases of 
humanity and nurturing all socially* valuable individualities, 
must be indefinitely continued. Our future education must 
exalt social obhgations above mere competitive egoisms. 
Our new education must expand beyond our expanding 
schools. It must flow over into the library, the newspaper, 
the club, the factory. It must be an education which will 
aid society in the conservation of the life and the health of 
the citizens and in their progressive development. It must 

doubtedly true that the intellectual progress of the nation is hampered 
by the arrested educational development of the poorer of our Southern 
Stateg. 



330 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



! 



aid men in their industrial pursuits, in their poUtical activi- 
ties, and in their private Ufe outside of industry and poUtics. 
It must guide society and individuals in the wise consump- 
tion of wealth. 

To socialize production we must also sociaHze consump- 
tion. We are entering into an age where men will suffer 
more from an injudicious, than from an insufficient, con- 
sumption of wealth. Food, clothes, books, tools, utensils, 
amusements, are already pouring in on us at an unprece- 
dentedly rapid rate; and we are consuming without judgment, 
without moderation, without regard to our individual in- 
terests or to the interests of society. Much of this con- 
sumption is absolutely noxious. To-day more Americans 
are seriously injured by an unwise consumption of wealth 
and by an inept use of leisure than by overwork or by evil 
conditions of work, although the latter, to a . considerable 
extent, induce the former. 

The importance of socializing consumption becomes 
quite evident when we reflect upon the enormous revenues 
which under a sociahzed production would come to the peo- i 
pie. A billion dollars saved from banal and pleasure-de- 
stroying consumption is a biUion dollars — and more — saved. 
We do not often reahze the extent of this waste. What has 
been called the anarchy of production is order superlative 
in comparison with the prevailing anarchy of consumption. 
Competition has been carried over from the making of goods 
to the using of them. Much of our expenditure is a pure 
competition of display. Fashion, conspicuous waste, absurd 
extravagance, even among the poor, destroy an astonishing 
proportion of the national product. The pleasure of Ameri- 
cans consists largely in the breaking of expensive toys. 

Much of this unwise and antisocial consumption of 
wealth is due to ultra-individualism. In consumption, men 
lack the disciphne and coordination which they have 
learned in production. Moreover, there is manifested in 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 331 

consumption a certain instinctive conservatism, which lies 
deep in all of us. The man who follows every craze and fad, 
buying when the crowd buys and forgetting when the crowd 
forgets, is a timorously conservative consumer of wealth. 
There are women who are heterodox in rehgion, poHtics, 
and cooking, who nevertheless dare not wear a small hat 
when other women wear their hats large. 

To a considerable extent, mere economic pressure and 
stimulus may be rehed upon to break this conservatism of 
consumption. The "flat" displaces the house when rents 
and housemaid's wages rise, and apartment hotels become 
patronized (and hked) by people who a few years earlier 
could not have been induced to enter them. The number 
of persons sleeping out of doors increases far more slowly 
than does the knowledge that this habit is beneficial; but 
the multitudes who use safety razors, phonographs, tele- 
phones, cameras, and other advertised wares grow with 
astounding rapidity. The advertisements in magazines 
and newspapers are thus a better index of the contempo- 
raneous civihzation than are the articles and editorials. 
Unfortunately, however, business cannot always be relied 
upon to socialize production. It acts equally in the opposite 
direction by producing articles which are deleterious and 
absurd, and with no other merit than that of being a link in 
an endless chain of tasteless ostentation. 

To sociahze our consumption we must therefore depend 
upon the direct or indirect action of the state and upon the 
gradual education of the consumers. We cannot of course 
revert to sumptuary laws, for nothing would so increase the 
demand for ostrich feathers as a law forbidding their use 
to persons "of low degree." We can, however, forbid the 
unregulated sale of such articles as opium and cocaine, and 
we may somewhat reduce the consumption of alcohol ^ and 

* The extreme difficulty of the problem of socializing oiir consumption 
is illustrated in the history of our liquor traffic. For too long we have 



332 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

tobacco by levying a tax upon their manufacture or sale. 
The renting (and therefore the using) of insufficient or in- 
sanitary housing accommodation may be rigorously forbid- 
den by law, and a definite irreducible minimum of quaUty 
may be estabUshed for all foods bought by the people. 

The state can also sociaUze consumption by furnishing 
a larger number of common goods. By ''common goods ^' 
is here meant those commodities and services which are fur- 
nished to the citizens in their individual capacity freely, 
though the citizens pay for them in their collective capacity. 
To an ever increasing extent the state (national, State, and 
municipal) is spending for all of us. It is far better that 
the people of a city enjoy a large park than that a hundred 
citizens have private parks and a hundred thousand have 
none. Much of this governmental expenditure (notably 
that for army, navy, etc.) is still unwise and primitive, but 
gradually the socially useful expenditure increases. Ex- 
penditure by government has the advantage of being non- 
competitive as between individuals. It has the advantage 
of buying for the community things which the individuals 
cannot buy for themselves. It is better regulated. It is 
on the whole more economical. It gives a greater pleasure 
per unit of cost, because it is so largely a rendering of satis- 
factions wholesale instead of retail. 

The influence of education upon national consumption 
is potent and pervasive. Through education we may some- 
followed a purely instinctive policy. Prohibition laws are passed and left 
unenforced, so that "the women have their law and 'the boys' have their 
whiskey." We incarcerate inebriates for a day or two and discharge them 
with a thirst, or we send them from court with a three-dollar fine or a semi- 
humorous reprimand. We have only begun as a nation to learn the inter- 
actions between alcoholism, on the one hand, and insanity, feeble-minded- 
ness, child mortality, tuberculosis, and other diseases, prostitution, suicide, 
unemployment, poverty, and national inefficiency. We are only begin- 
ning to trace much of our alcoholism to poverty and much to a starved 
intellectual life. After decades of striving, we are still at the beginnings 
of a solution. 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 333 

what discourage the elephantiasis of consumption to which 
our present taste runs.'^ Through education we may throw 
the emphasis upon those economic satisfactions which may 
be had jointly as opposed to other satisfactions which are 
personal and exclusive. In educating society to socialize 
its consumption, moreover, we shall in turn sociahze our 
production, some of the worst evils of which result from our 
undisciplined consumption. 

The article of consumption most often neglected is 
leisure. Leisure is an indispensable element to all enjoy- 
ment. It is the thing in which the American, despite his 
overflowing wealth, is the poorest. 

Americans have never taken time and still do not take 
time for leisure. We seek to telescope our pleasures, to 
enjoy much in Httle time. As a nation we are hke the in- 
stantaneous American traveler who does the Louvre in an 
hour and the Vatican in half a morning. We are obsessed 
by the doctrine of a strenuous life, of a life of effort and labor, 
without leisure or quiet development. 

The American conception of leisure has always been one 
of mild disapprobation. There was rather a feeling that 
we should live to labor, not labor to live. This conception, 
which was more or less explicable during the days of the 
conquest of the continent, is not a Httle ludicrous to-day 
when advanced by the financier who is benefiting by our 
accumulating surplus. An austere disapprobation of holi- 
days is also given expression by many of our newspapers, 
and when, to please the Italian vote, a State legislature 
made Columbus Day a holiday, some of our journals 
preached eloquent sermons against idle workmen, supine 
legislators, and reckless Genoese sailors. In the eyes of 

* We may perhaps also expect a certain approach to a sanity of taste 
with a more assured income enjoyed for some time. Our present society 
runs to excess — not only because it is so obstinately competitive, but 
because we are still nouveaux riches. 



334 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

these journals and of many well-meaning manufacturerg 
and professional men, the workman should prefer to work 
twelve hours instead of eight, if by working four hours more 
he earns more.^ 

What is, however, more needed in America than almost 
anything else is a wider leisure and a better knowledge of 
how to use it. We need shorter hours for workman, mer- 
chant, banker, lawyer, doctor, engineer. The American 
who has made his money and now dies of ennui represents 
the situation at one end of the line ; the PoUsh workman in 
a steel mill who labors all day and every day, Sunday, week- 
day, and hoHday, represents it at the other. Between the 
two we have the ''ambitious," ''self-respecting" hard-work- 
ing man, with no idea but labor. What does he earn, this 
tame, virtuous, self-driven, over-ambitious drudge? More 
dollars in the bank, fewer years of Hfe, and fewer pleasures 
while he Hves. Better a "sturdy beggar" or a vermin-in- 
fested tramp than a desiccated toiler who works twelve 
hours a day, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the 
year. 

The democratic policies of conservation, education, and 
the socialization of consumption have one element in com- 
mon, a tendency to promote equality of opportunity. The 
same element appears in the fourth social policy of the 
democracy; in the policy of extending the advantages of 
progress and democratization to all groups in society. 

We may secure the life and health of the people. We 
may educate them and promote a wise and beneficent con- 
sumption of the fruits of the nation's labor. One ques- 
tion, however, remains. Who are to be the ultimate bene- 
ficiaries of all this progress? Who are to be admitted to, 

* Professional men, not on salary, rarely care for fixed holidays, because 
to so large an extent they are masters of their own time and choose their 
own holidays. Workmen may not miss a day (without leave) and may 
not be late a minute. 



1 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 335 

and who are to be debarred from, the new civilization which 
is preparing ? 

It would be an easy problem for democracy if, as stand- 
ards rose, the whole of the people would rise with them. 
Under such conditions progress would be uninterrupted, 
equal, easy. Unfortunately, however, society bears with it 
always the burden of the submerged. The ignorant, in- 
competent, vicious, weak, the feeble-minded and feeble- 
willed we have always with us. We drag behind us the 
chain and ball of the ruthlessness of the past. The 
democracy, even when successful against the pretensions 
of privilege, finds itself opposed to the obstruction and 
dead weight of the nether world. 

There is a current theory that this nether world, left to 
itself, will destroy itself, and that in this destruction lies 
the salvation of the democracy. This theory, which is 
based on an assumed analogy between biological and social 
phenomena, asserts that progress, even under a democracy, 
can come only through a perpetual, rigorous weeding out 
of the unfit. Those who fall into crime, prostitution, and 
misery, those who fail to meet the standards set by the 
democratic majority, must die as the unfit have died for 
tens of thousands of centiu-ies. Workhouses, jails, slums, 
hunger, disease, must be allowed to do their work. 

If all the unfitness in society were due to heredity and 
none of it were due to social arrangements, if it were pos- 
sible painlessly to remove at each generation all who were 
indubitably unfit to survive and all who were indubitably 
unfit to propagate, we might perhaps resign ourselves to 
this recurring excision of the submerged. But all this is 
not possible. We are not sure even of our own standards 
of fitness. As we look over history, we see that men with 
certain instincts and capacities are regarded as noxious in 
one generation" and a.s social saviors in a second. There 
are, it is true, extreme cases in which we may act. We 



336 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



1 



need not suffer the indiscriminate breeding of our hundreds 
of thousands of feeble-minded, nor of others with assured 
and ineradicable hereditary taints. But with our present 
knowledge we cannot go far in this direction. We can no 
more trust ourselves with any absolute dominion over life 
and death than we could trust the medieval scribes with 
the preservation of classical literature. That way lies too 
dead a uniformity, too brutal a tyranny of the present 
over the future. We dare not be overrash in the exter- 
mination of human types which deviate from an approved 
norm. We must preserve our hereditary heretics. 

No such annihilation of the dwellers of the nether world 
ever really takes place. The submerged social classes do 
not die, but merely become sick. And in their sickness 
they avenge themselves upon society, much as certain 
Orientals are supposed to do, by committing suicide on 
their oppressor's doorstep. The girl forced into prostitu- 
tion through society's carelessness is not without her revenge 
upon society. The boy who becomes a criminal, when 
with a little social wisdom he might have been a useful 
citizen, does not bear his burden alone. From the nether 
world spreads the virus of physical and moral contagion; 
and every immorality, bred of weakness, finds its ultimate 
victims both above and below the poverty line. 

The nether world does not die of mere social neglect, 
but, on the contrary, grows upon it. Although the mor- 
tality of the submerged is excessive, the nether world re- 
acts violently with a birth rate so high and desperate as to 
fill the gutters with hopeless children. Moreover the nether 
world grows by accretion. Democracy rests upon a mul- 
titude of restraints and inhibitions. The slum attacks these 
restraints and inhibitions. It furnishes company to those 
who are tempted to fall. The sight of the slum, the ex- 
ample of it, the direct teaching of it, draw ever new re- 
cruits. The slum becomes a rallying ground and an alter- 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 337 

native to those who are hesitating on the verge of demo- 
cratic duties. 

As the tolerated nether world grows through immigra- 
tion from above, so also it grows through a continual shift- 
ing of the social boundary between it and the classes above. 
The attitude of mind which concurs in a division of human 
kind into the terrestrially saved and the terrestrially damned 
cannot but permit a similar division among the men above 
the slum. New sections of the community are left to 
themselves to work out their own destruction. The slum, 
increasing in size, increases its power of mischief. In a 
democracy in which it does not share, as in a plutocracy, 
the slum remains cynically corrupt. In the divisions which 
will arise in the differentiated democracy of to-morrow, the 
venal slum — if it survives — may well hold the balance 
of power. As to-day, so to-morrow, the slum may share in 
ruling. 

The problems and possibilities of the democracy in its 
relation to the nether world are not unlike the problems 
and possibilities of the trade-=union in its relation to men 
incapable of earning union wages. As the labor organiza= 
tion raises the standard of remuneration of its members, 
the pressure upon workingmen unable to secure employ- 
ment at these wages increases, with a resulting deep em- 
bitterment. So long as the labor organization includes a 
majority of the more efficient men in the trade, it is able to 
profit by its victories. If, however, there grows up outside 
too large or too strong a body of non-unionists; if the union, 
instead of striving to become a majority, is content to re- 
main a minority, a mere closed corporation resisting infiltra- 
tion from below, — then the balance of power is likely to 
change. The rejected non-unionists may overrun the 
trade. The standards, so hardly won, may be abandoned. 
The union, defeated and brushed aside, may crumble and 
disintegrate. 



338 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

Like the union, the democracy must combat, with all 
the forces in its control, the growth of a disaffected group 
below its level. It must struggle, not only against the 
oligarchical few at the top, but against the creation of an 
anti-democratic helotry at the bottom. Like the union, it 
cannot afford to increase its numbers by lowering its stand- 
ards, but through education, through social betterment, 
and through an active and persistent propaganda it must 
raise so many (if not all) of the submerged to its level as to 
render its own destruction impossible. Like the trade- 
union, the democracy must always be open at the bottom. 

The democracy is thus compelled to cure the slum to 
prevent its own destruction by the slum. Its instinct to 
live as well as its justice and clemency impel the democracy 
to this course. No democracy can be achieved, and no 
democracy, once achieved, can be maintained, except as 
the dead weight of the masses below the democratic levels 
is progressively lightened. 

The policy of the democracy towards the submerged 
divides itself into three parts: first, the redemption of men 
who have fallen below the democratic levels; second, the 
utmost possible prevention of social failures, not by end- 
ing social contests, but by improving the contestants; 
third, the provision of a reasonably satisfactory situation 
for incorrigibles, and their effective isolation from the rest 
of society. 

This program of the democracy, which is the old pro- 
gram of human conservation upon a new level, is so wide- 
reaching that it is impossible to give within a small scope 
even the vaguest outlines of its main features. What we 
are chiefly seeking to do is to shut off all the channels which 
lead to the under world, to cuie the slum at its hundreds of 
sources. 

Everywhere progress along these lines, though obstructed, 
is evident. Although the first juvenile court in the United 



i 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 339 

States was not established until 1899, the whole attitude 
of the nation towards the deUnquent child has already been 
revolutionized, and the young boy who formerly would 
have been transformed into a criminal is now treated in 
many courts with tender solicitude and a far-seeing social 
wisdom. Our whole social attitude towards children, 
towards child labor, truancy, the neglect of children, is 
being changed. We are beginning to see that bad teeth in 
children, neglected adenoids, or starved little bodies may 
result in himdreds of thousands of social wrecks, and we are 
slowly bringing ourselves to face the stupendous problem 
involved in the neglected presence in our midst of blind, 
crippled, feeble-minded, and defective children. The de- 
mocracy is reaching out into the home, and the parental 
tyranny of former days is giving way to an enforced parental 
responsibility, based upon the inalienable and indestructible 
rights of the child. A hundred years ago, a father might 
with impunity beat, starve, or slowly kill his child, for a 
man could do what he wished with his own. To-day not 
only do we protect the child from the cruder forms of physi- 
cal violence, but we enter into degraded homes to save the 
child from underfeeding, physical or moral infection, and 
exposure to evil influences of all kinds. Where parents are 
too ignorant, too drunken, too immoral, or too dispirited 
to prevent their children from becoming a prey of the 
criminal slum, the State intervenes. A Cahfornia law goes 
so far as to provide ^Hhat the expense of maintaining their 
own children may be allowed to parents out of the public 
fimds at the discretion of the court, within the limits fixed 
by the law.^ 

As the child is being saved from contamination, so on 
another plane the young girl is being protected from the 

1 Breckinridge (Sophonisba P.), "The Community and the Child," 
The Survey, February 4, 1911, referring to the McCartney juvenile court 
law, Section 21. 



340 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



9 



most debasing influences of our modem life. Gradually, 
though far too slowly, laws are being passed regulating the 
hours of labor of women, ^ forbidding night work and pro- 
hibiting the emplojnnent of women in certain dangerous 
and noxious trades. The magnificent upbuilding work of 
the Women's Trade Union League, which seeks to represent 
all the interests of all women employed in industry, is a 
force of tremendous moment in our struggle for democracy, 
and the analogous work of protecting and guiding immi- 
grant girls tends in the same direction. Numerous insti- 
tutions and societies arise for the purveying of amusement 
and recreation both to children and young folks, on the 
principle that all work and no play makes Jack not only a 
dull, but a vicious boy. 

The full brunt of the democratic campaign against the 
growth of an under world thus lies, not so much in the 
uplift of those who have fallen, as in the provision of con- 
ditions which prevent falling. ''The new penology," says 
Dr. Edward T. Devine, ''concerns itself less with what is 
done in penal and reformatory institutions and in courts — 
radical as are the changes which it would introduce there 
— than with agencies for prevention. Crime in the last 
analysis is not to be overcome after arrest, but before.) 
Schools, churches, playgrounds, settlements, trade-unions, 
and charitable societies — agencies of social progress and of 
social reform, public and private — are the handmaidens 
of the new penology. We shall transform police, courts, 
and prisons when we have further transformed society, 
and the forces which help to raise and give stability and 
vitality to our standards of living and our standards of 
action are the forces to which in the end the bad features 
and the obsolete features of the existing penal system will 
yield. The environment is transformed by child labor laws 

* See the laws of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, Mis- 
souri, and other States. 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 341 

and the protection of children, by housing laws and im- 
proved sanitation, by the prevention of tuberculosis and 
other diseases, by health-giving recreational facilities, by 
security of employment, by insurance against the fatalities 
of industry and the financial burdens of death and disease, 
by suitable vocational training, by all that adds to the 
content of human life and gives us higher and keener motives 
to self-control, strenuous exertion, and thrift. The strong- 
hold of crime is social misery. The cure for misery is better 
adjustment of social elements to one another and to the 
infinite possibilities of the environment." ^ 

The mere existence of a phrase like the ''new penology *' 
shows the changed spirit with which the rising democracy 
faces the submerged masses. We are still shamed by bad 
prisons, evil laws, and an absurdly inadequate criminal 
procedure. But we are slowly passing out of the old retali- 
atory attitude towards offenders. We are laying emphasis 
upon sane discipline, physical exercise, and the instruction 
and healthy employment of prisoners. We are attacking 
fixed sentences, solitary confinement, and inefficient inspec- 
tion of jails, and we are beginning to look upon the prison 
almost as an adjunct to the school. ''The new penology," 
to quote Dr. Devine once more, "is not sentimental. . . . 
At least in its present transitional stage, the average term 
of restraint which it imposes is considerably longer than in 
the penal system which it displaces. It sentences, however, 
to a hospital by preference rather than to a dungeon. It 
sentences to cleanliness, good food, and wholesome disci- 
pline, and not to infection and degradation."^ In the same 
way the clean, sanitary municipal lodging house of to- 
day, with its decent food and its enforced compensatory 
work, begins to take the place of the vermin-infected tramp 
lockup, in the congenial vileness of which hardened crim- 

* "The Correction and Prevention of Crime," The Survey, January 21, 
1911. 2 Op. cit. 



M2 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

inals instruct the ingenuous, occasionally unemployed, 
boy. 

Fundamentally the new attitude of the democracy 
towards the criminal and potentially criminal classes is 
one which is dictated by wisdom and a growing sense of 
social responsibility. To make outcasts of those who have 
once broken the law is to increase the number of society's 
enemies. Individual responsibility, it is true, cannot be 
done away with, but in the time to come the culpable 
individual will be allowed to plead the contributory neg- 
ligence of society. For every wayward man and woman, 
society must be called to the bar. In other words, society 
must prevent crime by promoting education and happiness, 
or must accept the underlying responsibility for its default. 
It must not '^punish" the criminal or hunt him forever 
within society, but must offer to him a Ufe which, though 
dependent and below that of the rest of the population, is 
at least secure, reasonably eligible, and with as httle con- 
straint as is consistent with the safety of society and the] 
education of the criminal. The democracy must not raise 
up enemies within its ranks. 

What applies to the incapables and the criminals, applies 
with even greater force to special groups who are separated 
from the rest of the population and are hated or despised. 
In America we have a racial problem of more fearful portent | 
than that of any of the nations of Europe. We are still | 
paying the endless price of slavery. The South is psycho- • 
logically cramped. The North is bewildered. The Negro 
problem is the mortal spot of the new democracy. 

At the moment we are beset by the problem of Negro 
suffrage. It is being urged by a dominant school of thought 
that the immediate salvation of the Negro is less political 
than economic, and that his possession of money and edu- 
cation (above all of technical and industrial education) will 
eventually compel the grant to him of full political rights 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 343 

at a time when he can best avail himself of them. This 
non-resistant attitude is hotly repelled by another group, 
who declare that Negro acquiescence in Negro disenfranchise- 
ment is a denial of democracy, a surrender to race prejudice, 
and an obstacle in the path of the accumulation of money 
and education, which is the very alternative proposed to 
political rights. '^If we have not the vote," they say, ''we 
shall have neither education nor justice; if we have not 
the vote, our schools will be starved and our farms and our 
jobs will be lost.'' 

Whatever the merits of this controversy as a matter of 
ethics or practical politics, it seems probable that the 
present democratic movement, uneasily recognizing this 
danger in its rear, will move forward, leaving the problem of 
Negro suffrage to one side. It is a sign of disillusionment. 
We look at the Negro vote in Philadelphia and Cincinnati, 
and wonder whether it is worth while to lay aside other 
problems to secure a Negro vote in Atlanta and Charleston. 
Thus it happens that men, animated by a spirit analogous 
to that which freed the slaves, are seeking to ignore the 
problem of Negro disenfranchisement. Even the Socialist 
party, which is a defender of desperate causes, seems to 
avoid the problem. 

It is perhaps possible to evade this issue of Negro suf- 
frage if we can satisfy ourselves that the vote is not imme- 
diately essential to Negro civilization; if we can honestly 
believe that the denial to the Negro of the vote is advan- 
tageous, not only to us, but to him.^ We may not, however, 
presume to make the negro an ''underman," to offer him a 
subhuman or a subcivilized life. For as he grows, the 
Negro, if he be not given, will take. Even as we advance, 

* If, as is claimed, the ballot is, at present, really disadvantageous to 
the Negro, we need not give it to him merely to be logical. But we shall 
do well to beware of sophistries intended merely to give a justification to 
our disinclination or fear of raising the issue. The mouse can find many 
reasons, philanthropic and other, for not belling the cat. 



344 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

hoping perhaps that the democracy won and wrought by 
the whites will descend as an easy heritage to the reen- 
franchised Negroes, we are oppressed by the dread of what 
may occur. There may arise a Negro consciousness, a 
dark sense of outraged racial dignity. There may come a 
stirring of a rebellious spirit among ten, or, as it soon will 
be, of twenty or thirty, million black folk. We cannot 
hope forever to sit quietly at the feast of life and let the 
black man serve. We cannot build upon an assumed 
superiority over these black men, who are humble to-day, 
but who to-morrow may be imperious, exigent, and proudly 
race-conscious. 

Moreover, a grave (though perhaps not a near) danger 
lies in a failure to grapple with the race problem. The time 
may come when the plutocracy, hard driven by the rising 
tide of the new democracy, may attempt to save itself by 
raising anew the question of the Negro's position in industry 
and politics. The best antidote to democracy is jingoism 
and race hatred.^ It is an appeal from higher and newer 
to lower and older instincts. It is an appeal which in 
America would open the dikes and let in the dark waters. 
The plutocracy, which has much to fear from a democrati- 
zation of politics and industry, would have nothing to fear 
from any Negro suffrage which it itself champions ; and it 
might have much to gain both from the vote^ and the labor 
of the grateful black men. 

If it be attempted to repress the Negroes, to show them 
their place, we may encounter the possibility of an incon- 
ceivably savage race war. If white men and black men 
were ever to fight on the old plantations of the South we 
should have an awakening of brutaUties such as no war of 

* The ally of the reaotionary is the "hereditary enemy." Onoe you oan 
stir up raoe or national hatred, you have postponed your social develop- 
ment. If you can but hate a Spaniard or a Boer, you will for the time 
being cease to hate all public iniquity, however flaunting. 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 345 

modern times has evoked. Even so trivial a thing as a 
prize fight between a Negro and a white man led recently to 
a disgusting subemotional debauch of tens of millions of 
us, and to a violent recrudescence of the lynching spirit. 
If there were ever a reign of terror throughout the Black 
Belt, if a few thousand white men and women were to be 
slaughtered by hordes of enraged Negroes, there would be 
a backwash of civilization, a recurrence of barbarism, 
which would reach to the furthermost hamlets of Maine and 
Oregon. 

And yet, if the democracy in America is to be a white 
democracy, and the civilization in America is to be a white 
ciyiUzation ; if it is proposed to make of the Negro a thing 
without rights, a permanent semiemancipated slave, a 
headless, strong-armed worker, then let the white civiliza= 
tion beware. We may sunder the races if we can ; we may 
preserve a race integrity if we can; we may temporarily 
limit the Negro's suffrage. If, however, we abate the ulti- 
mate rights, prerogatives, and privileges of either race, if 
we seek permanently to set up lower standards for one 
race, we shall plant the seeds of our own undoing. Our 
self -protection, as much as our sense of justice, must impel 
us towards the increase in the Negro's ability, morale^ and 
opportunity. Just as a diphtheritic Negro will infect a 
white man, just as the tubercle bacillus, oblivious of the 
color line, will go from the black man's home to the Aryan's, 
so weakness, immorality, ignorance, and recklessness will 
spread from one race to the other as a prairie fire spreads 
from farm to farm. Whether we love the Negro or hate 
him, we are, and shall continue to be, tied to him. 

If to-day our ten million American Negroes resided, not 
in the United States, but in a contiguous territory, asking 
for admission into the Union, it is extremely improbable 
that the mass of white men would permit the annexation. 
We might very well feel that, however engaging many of 



346 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

the qualities of the Negroes are, and however much the 
present bitter racial antagonism may be allayed, it would 
be the part of folly to lay aside our own problems to take 
up new problems of racial adjustment. For the Negro's 
sake as well as for our own, we should prefer to stay apart. 

A somewhat analogous problem is presented by our in- 
creasing immigration. Here it is not a problem of racial 
hatred so much as it is one of economic and social adjust- 
ment. We need not claim a superiority over the people 
who throng in at Ellis Island. We may concede their 
splendid qualities, and still advance proposals for the stem- 
ming of this human flood. 

The policy of a restriction of immigration does not in- 
volve a disbelief in America's future. It does not base 
itself on the belief that the country is ^'full up." Under 
proper economic and social conditions, we could easily take 
care of two hundred, or even more, millions of people.! 
The crux of the difficulty, however, is that a too speedy and 
unregulated immigration tends to prevent the very adjust- 
ments which would make the prosperity of the greater 
miUions possible. ji 

For many decades Americans have hesitated to lay an 
embargo upon this inspiring westward movement. It was 
our proudest boast — our highest ideal — that America was 
to be the haven of the world's oppressed. So long as we 
had free lands in the West, so long as each new immigrant 
added inevitably to the wealth of his neighbors, this ideal 
was rooted in the economic conditions. But in the course 
of time we deeded away the continent which was to have 
been the home of the oppressed, and, year by year, we 
found it more and more impossible to deflect the broader 
stream of immigration from the congested districts of our 
cities. To-day the ideal is in conflict with our economic and 
poUtical conditions. Failing its economic root, the ideal 
has degenerated into a tradition. 



iTHE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE DEMOCRACY 347 

In the next decade or two our intensifying struggle for 
democracy will render a further restriction of immigration 
imperative. The change will not be too violent, for our 
present residents will somehow smuggle in their nearest 
relatives, and there will always be openings in the gate. 
But when we illogically and brutally, though wisely, for- 
bade the immigration of the Chinese, we made an unheal- 
able breach in the rule of hospitaUty, and gave a precedent 
and a colorable pretext for future restrictions. 

It is significant, to-day, that many of the people who are 
opposed to a practically unregulated immigration are the 
very ones who are seeking to promote the welfare of those 
immigrants who are already in. The policy of the democ- 
racy towards immigration is coming to be one of a check- 
ing of the rapidity of the flow, a selection of the best candi- 
dates for admission, and the quickest and most thorough 
possible preparation of the accepted immigrants for the 
duties of American citizenship. The danger to the Ameri- 
can experiment in democracy of too near a contact with 
European poverty can hardly be overestimated. If, during 
the next fifty years, we receive thirty or even fifty milUons 
of unsifted newcomers from Europe, we may find ourselves 
but little further advanced in democracy after that period 
than before. If, on the other hand, we so limit immigration 
that but five or ten miUions enter — and if these five or 
ten milUons be people especially selected for their adjust- 
ability to American conditions, we may so far advance in 
the task of improving the economic, political, and psy- 
chological development of the masses as to render inevi- 
table the progressive attainment of the social goal of the 
democracy. 



CHAPTER XX 

CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 

WHEN we review American history from the Declaration 
of Independence to these days, we find that we neither 
possess a sociaUzed democracy, nor have we lost one. Neither 
in 1776 nor in 1789 did we have institutions, conditions, or 
habits of mind upon which such a sociaUzed democracy 
could have been built. Our conquest of the Continent, 
though essential to national expansion, and even to national 
survival, did not aid such a democracy, except in so far as it 
provided for it an eventual material basis. On the contrary, 
the economic, political, and psychological developments 
inseparably connected with the struggle with the wilderness 
worked against the immediate attainment of a socialized 
democracy, and led to wild excesses of individuaUsm, which 
in turn culminated in the growth of a powerful and intrenched 
plutocracy. 

We are now beginning to realize that our present acute 
social unrest is not due to an attempt to return to the condi- 
tions and principles of the eighteenth century, but is merely a 
symptom of a painfully evolving democracy, at once indus- 
trial,political, and social. We are beginning to realize that our 
stumbhng progress towards this democracy of to-morrow re- 
sults from the efforts, not of a single class, but of the general 
community ; that the movement is not primarily a class war, 
but, because it has behind it forces potentially so overwhelm- 
ing, has rather the character of a national adjustment ; that 
the movement does not proceed from an impoverished people, 
nor from the most impoverished among the people, nor from 
a people growing, or doomed to grow, continually poorer, 

348 



CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 349 

but proceeds, on the contrary, from a population growing 
in wealth, intelligence, political power, and solidarity. We 
are awakening to the fact that this movement, because 
of the heterogeneous character of those who further it, is 
tentative, conciliatory, compromising, evolutionary, and 
legal, proceeding with a minimum of friction through a series 
of partial victories ; that the movement is influenced and 
colored by American conditions and traditions, proceeding, 
with but few violent breaks, out of our previous industrial, 
political, and intellectual development and out of our mate- 
rial and moral accumulations, and utilizing, even while 
reforming and reconstituting, our economic and legal machin- 
ery. It is a movement dependent upon a large social sur- 
plus; a movement which grows in vigor, loses in bitterness, 
and otherwise takes its character from the growing fund of 
our national wealth, which gives it its motive and impetus. 
Finally, it is a movement which in the very course of its 
fulfillment develops broad and ever broadening industrial, 
political, and social programs, which aim at the ultimate 
maintenance of its results. 

The question, however, remains. Can such a democracy 
endure? Are there in society forces making for the per- 
manency of such a high democratic civihzation, once at- 
tained ? 

We may well walk warily in this problem, since its con- 
sideration involves matters of which we cannot surely know. 
The telling of society^s fortune — what one may call social 
astrology — results in a prophecy which is in part a reflex 
of the prophet's personality and is in part determined by what 
the credulous patron likes to hear. Even if we substitute for 
pure prophecy a reasoned social projection, — a mental carry- 
ing out of forces already at work, — • we advance but Httle 
along the path of authority. Our data are too few. We are 
all — pessimists and optimists alike — but clamorous spec- 
tators before a curtain which is just rising. We see the feet, 



350 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

not the faces, of the actors, and we can guess only rudely at 
the play which is going on. What consideration we give to 
the problem must be accompanied by an admission that 
from any real knowledge of the future workings of democratic 
principles we are as far removed as are they whose opinions 
we repel. 

There are many men, expurgated democrats, who, while 
they desire a certain extension of democracy, fear its com- 
plete rule more than they fear the rule of tyrant or dictator. 
They look into the face of the new monarch and are afraid. 
They listen to the prophetic flatteries of popular courtiers, 
who appeal to the most brutish instincts of the Demos. They 
call the rule of the millions, not a democracy, but an ^'och- 
locracy." They expect from this rule, not civihzation, but 
decivilization. 

This fundamental dread of democracy Ues in the supposed 
incurability of its errors. In every other form of government 
there is some sort of quasi-appeal from the minority to the 
residual right of revolution of the majority. But in a de- 
mocracy there is no appeal from the majority. Only under 
a democracy can a nation commit suicide. 

There is a certain lack of robustness in all these fears ; a 
certain oversophistication of men who forget of what tough, 
resistant fiber our milUon-year-old race is made. We 
have survived worse evils than the worst with which we are 
now threatened, and we shall doubtless evade the ''logically 
inevitable" results of democracy, as we have evaded the logi- 
cally inevitable results of every other system of government 
and society. A democracy threatened with war, hunger, or 
national extermination would instinctively change under the 
stress. It would evolve vigilance conunittees, committees 
of public safety, temporary dictators, who, if the conditions 
demanded it, would become permanent. Democracy is not 
perpetual except in so far as it promotes race survival. It is 
an experiment, as fire and clothes and science and reUgion 



CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 351 

are experiments. It is our present hope that democracy has 
many centuries in which to develop, and that nothing but a 
dissipation of our material natural resources can produce the 
threatened deciviHzation. If, however, for any reason de- 
mocracy becomes incompatible with progress and happiness, 
it will simply cease. 

The supposed incompatibility of democracy with progress 
rests on the assumption that democracy means an intoler- 
able 'tyranny of the majority" over the minority, of the 
ignorant over the wise, of the careless over the prudent, of the 
mediocre over the men of genius and spirituality. It is 
feared that democracy would perpetuate ignorance, would 
worship an unnatural equality, would despise liberty and 
the development of individuality. This accusation has its 
basis in several concepts; firstly, that the ruhng mass of 
society is and would continue to be ignorant, besotted with 
a sense of its knowledge, jealously hating men of larger in- 
telligence, and hating to hear Aristides called the Just; 
secondly, that this mass holding the reins of power and rul- 
ing by its own ignorance, would have no reason to educate 
itself or to permit or reward education in others. In other 
words, having no intellectual class to act upon it, it would 
remain intellectually inert, an undrained, dismal bog of 
human ignorance. 

These assumptions prove on analysis to be arbitrary. 
The sullen jealousy against intelligence found in certain sec- 
tions of all populations seems due, in part at least, to an ig- 
norance born of evil social conditions, and directed against 
men who have had better intellectual, because they have had 
better economic, opportunities. But the mass of Americans 
cannot by the wildest exaggeration be placed in this mental 
state, and the eyes of America, as of the world, are set towards 
a greater and more diffused education. The very lessening 
of pecuniary differences would inevitably set up competitions 
upon other planes, notably upon the plane of intellectual 



352 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

development. The more (though not necessarily the most) 
intelligent would inevitably exercise a dominating influence 
over the less intelUgent. Then, as now, a relatively high 
degree of inteUigence among milUons of people would be 
necessary to the welfare, even to the very existence, of the 
community, and then, as now, even the ignorant voter would 
know when things went ill with him. Both the opportunities 
and the desires of men would spur them to greater efforts, so 
that a general intelligence of the whole community on a level 
with that of the more intelligent tenth of society to-day would 
be well within the range of possibiUty. The more intelUgent 
could not rule except through the great mass, but the incen- 
tive and, above all, the opportunities of the mass would be 
greatly increased. 

To-day a part of our educational initiative is due to social 
capillarity, to a desire to rise from one social or economic class 
to another. But such desires and such opportunities 
would also exist under a sociahzed democracy. No social 
organization has the remotest chance of establishment which 
is not based on the fullest recognition of the inherent ine- 
qualities of men, and of the infinitely wide range of human 
tastes, capacities, and aptitudes. What a socialized democ- 
racy demands is an equalization, not of men, but of oppor- 
tunities, although by raising the status of the lowest, it re- 
duces by comparison the material rewards of the successful. 
Its effect, however, should on the whole be an increase rather 
than a decrease in the competition for the superior positions. 
To-day, to employ a certain exaggeration, the son of a banker 
becomes a banker much as the Prince of Wales becomes 
king of England. The chance of a banker's son becoming a 
hodcarrier is only a little less than the chance of the hod- 
carrier's son becoming a banker. The competition for the 
superior position and the competition for the education which 
will qualify for the superior position are very much less in our 
wealth-stratified society of to-day than they would be in a 



CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 353 

socialized democracy, in which the fullest conceivable oppor- 
tunities would be accorded to all. To use a loose illustration, 
the establishment of a sociahzed, differentiated democracy- 
should have the same influence upon education and the 
struggle for a favored position as has the estabhshment of 
competitive civil service examinations for positions which 
formerly went by favor. 

The fear of a destruction of himaan liberty seems equally 
unfounded. It is true that a democracy which did not have 
its basis in economic and social needs might possibly re- 
strict hberty, for essentially unstable governments can only 
maintain themselves — and that only temporarily — by 
encroachments upon the rights of the citizens. If, however, 
we assume that a sociahzed democracy is the best form for 
attaining the material welfare of the majority, and if by 
hberty we mean the right to do things which one should have 
the right to do, then there is no reason why a socialized 
democracy should not mean an increase, rather than a de- 
crease, in the sum total of liberty. 

Much of our complaint about the restriction of liberty is 
an echo from the forest, a belated cry from the old pioneer 
period. It is true that many absurd laws restrictive 
of liberty are annually enacted. But a real need of re- 
strictive legislation results from the greater density of our 
population and the increasing number of social hens and 
contacts. On the frontier addiction to a phonograph is a 
habit which may well be left to the individual and his con- 
science. In a membranous New York apartment house a 
man's unregulated right to indulge his musical tastes may run 
counter to his neighbor's equal right to sleep soundly of 
nights. The city, the factory, the trust, the huge fortune 
have given birth to a host of possible offenses which did not 
before exist. Moreover, as has already been pointed out, 
economic freedoms can often only be attained by legal pro- 
hibitions, and what is often interpreted as a limitation of 



354 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



freedom is in effect an increase of liberty, through the pro- 
tection of some individuals from the hitherto permitted 
aggressions of others. Unfortunately, there are only two 
means of preserving the citizens' liberty — education and 
the policeman's club. The prohibition of employing chil- 
dren in factories, while it may in individual cases adversely 
affect a child or its parents, is so protective of the rights of 
children as a whole that it is as much an increase in the liber- 
ties of the citizens as is the prohibition of counterfeiting, 
wife beating, and highway robbery. Under a socialized 
democracy, we shall have an increase in the amount of educa- 
tion, in the number of legal inhibitions, and in the sum total 
of the Hberties of the citizens. 

All these arguments are adduced against democracy on 
the ground that it is too evil to survive. An equally in- 
veterate argument is advanced that it is 'Hoo good to be 
true." 

Seemingly illogical as is this argument, there is, nevertheless, 
a certain basis for it in our past experience. We have never 
had a Utopia, though we have often dreamed that we were 
on the verge of one. Mankind "never is, but always to be, 
blest." A perfect state of terrestrial bliss, a lying down 
together of the human lion and the human lamb, is as remote 
from our racial experience as is the collision of sun and 
moon. 

The mortal defect of Utopias is that they are too static. 
The kingdom of heaven on earth is always a permanent, 
unchanging, perfect, and unutterably stupid place, than 
which om^ present society, with all its imperfections, is vastly 
superior. Utopias break down because they represent 
attainment, fulfillment. But society does not strive towards 
fulfillment, but only towards striving. It seeks not a goal, 
but a higher starting point from which to seek a goal. 

Opposed to such Utopias our present ideal of a social- 
ized democratic civilization is dynamic. It is not an 



1 



CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 355 

idyllic state in which all men are good and wise and in- 
sufferably contented. It is not a state at all^ but a mere 
direction. 

Were we to move into a democratic, socialized civiliza- 
tion, where misery had become as unknown as witchcraft 
to-day; where the people, educated and in process of educa- 
tion, ruled in their own interest both in industry and poUtics; 
where the common wisdom of a nation was united to solve 
common problems and work out a common destiny, we 
should still be faced by problems new and old. We should 
carry into the new civilization the tenacious appetites of 
to-day. We should struggle along with human frailties, with 
a residual ignorance, perverseness, meanness of outlook, 
exaggerated egotism. With the raising of the standard of 
life we should awaken new appetites and stimulate present 
ones. Our racial hatreds, our inveterate race animosities, 
would give way but slowly, so that even in a society advanced 
in civilization, lynchings and other horrible reversions to 
barbarism might occasionally occur. We may not hug the 
illusion of an instantaneous change in the old clinging evils. 
Drunkenness, prostitution, and a whole series of vices which 
are but pathological social forms of normal human instincts 
will but slowly give way. ''Virtue cannot so inoculate our 
old stock but we shall relish of it." 

With all these evils we need not now concern ourselves. 
It will be a wonderful advance in society when our crimes 
and vices will be crimes and vices of prosperity instead of 
those of poverty. We may confidently face the new, un- 
known dangers of prosperity with the powers and knowledge 
which that prosperity will bring. For this century we need 
but take this century^s forward step. If we can extirpate 
misery, that will be progress enough. 

By the rigorous Malthusians, we are told that even this 
more moderate program is now and forevermore impossible. 
We are warned that a democracy which gives an assured 



356 THE NEW DEMOCRACY 

income to all will stimulate our lax and thoughtless millions 
to so rash a procreation as to cause society to expand beyond 
the food supply necessary for its support. 

Forty years ago this dreadful threat of human fecundity 
still lay Hke an incubus upon the souls of all social reformers. 
Malthus was the prophet. We saw the nations growing daily 
in population. France and Ireland were exceptions, but 
France was alleged to be decadent, and distressful Ireland 
was admittedly bleeding through emigration. But since 
the eighties the birth rate in one nation after another, Eng- 
land, Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, 
Sweden, etc., has declined, and to-day we are spectators of 
a world-wide decrease in natality in almost all nations and in 
almost all sections of all nations. The more democratic and 
advanced nations seem on the whole those whose birth rate 
has most rapidly fallen. If the birth rate continues to de- 
cline (even though the decline in the death rate also con- 
tinue), the danger of decivilization through overpopulation 
will be completely dissipated. 

According to others the menace to democracy lies less in 
the fear of overpopulation than in that of depopulation. 
Numbers are an element (although only one element) of 
national power. Democracy, with its high national pro- 
ductiveness, may mean a capacity for sustaining larger popu- 
lations, but the individual ambitions and the higher stand- 
ards of living among a democratic population may result 
in an excessive and debilitating slackening of the rate of in- 
crease and in a lessened fighting capacity, which, until world- 
wide changes have worked themselves out, must remain the 
ultimate determinant between rival civiHzations. It is 
conceivable that frugal, prolific, and undemocratic civiliza- 
tions will become the most formidable. There may possibly 
come a time when a hundred million highly cultivated Ameri- 
cans may be threatened by half a billion well-armed, well- 
organized, prohfic, and abstemious Celestials, as Gaul was 



CAN A DEMOCRACY ENDURE? 357 

threatened and at last overrun by the Franks, and Britain 
by the Saxons and Danes. 

That this problem, like others, may some day arise to tax 
the resom-ces and the wisdom of an American democracy 
cannot to-day be gainsaid. If democracy means a lessened 
population, and that in turn means a lessened capacity for 
defense, then in future generations we may well be forced 
to accommodate our further progress in democratic evo- 
lution to that which is made to other formidable nations. 
For the time being, however, the danger is too shadowy and 
hypothetical to justify any slackening of our progress towards 
a socialized democracy. We need not put on our armor for 
battles which our children must fight. 



INDEX 



Abolitionism, effectiveness of, due to its 
harmonizing with the American 
economic trend, 73 n. 

Absolute socialism, theory of as pro- 
pounded by Marx and Engels, 171- 
173 ; the religious quality in, 173 ; 
upsetting of the theory, 174-177; 
non-consummation of the class-war 
doctrine of, 177-178; attempted 
adjustment of old absolute theories 
to modern broad democratic im- 
pulses, 182-183. 

Adams, John, supporter of the "gentle- 
man's" form of government, 10, 16. 

Advertising, effect of, in limiting freedom 
of expression in newspapers, 122- 
124. 

Agricultural wealth of United States, 
205 ; statistics of increase in (1850- 
1900), 213, 214. 

Alcoholic beverages, government prohi- 
bition of sale of, an expression of 
socialization, 289-290. 

Alcoholism, interactions between in- 
sanity, child mortality, tuberculosis, 
etc., and, 332 n. 

Alien and Sedition Laws, 16. 

Amendment of the Constitution, 13, 14- 
15, 110, 266-267, 316-318. 

Anarchy of consumption, the present 
era of, 330-332. 

Antagonism, the propagandist's prefer- 
ence for, over indifference, 272 n. 

Automobiles and plutocrats, 246 n. 

Autonomy, industrial, theory of, 281 n. ; 
basis of the objection of, to govern- 
ment regulation, 288; overturning 
of theory of, 289. 



B 



Banking business of federal gov«nment, 

extension of, 284. 
Beef Trust, 82, 86. 
"Benevolent feudalism," the prophecy 

of a, 4. 



Bernstein, Edward, cited, 177 n. 

Birth rate, decrease in, implies an im- 
proved standard of living, 320; 
excessively high, in the nether social 
world, 336 ; the Malthusian theory 
vs. the facts as regards countries of 
Western Europe, 355-356. 

Books as an outlet for free opinion, 134. 

Boss, origins of the, under the Jacksonian 
regime, 18. 

Bowley, Arthur L., cited, 174 n. 

Breckinridge, S. P., cited, 339. 

Bribery in politics, 57-58, 98-99, 101- 
103. See Corruption. 

Brook Farm, 73, 74. 

Bryce, James, quoted on the American 
plutocracy, 79; on congressional 
committees, 116; on public opinion 
in the United States, 137 ; on devel- 
opment of higher education in the 
United States, 230; on growing 
intelligence of the American masses, 
232 n. 



Charity as arranged by plutocracy's 
code of reform, 143. 

Children, change in the social attitude 
toward, 339. 

Chinese, illogical and brutal wisdom of 
exclusion of, 347. 

City, rapid development of the, 34 ; pre- 
emption of the, by politicians and 
financiers, 34-35 ; the American 
city of the Centennial year, 67-68; 
facility of creation of public opinion 
in, 232. 

City-dwellers, improvement in status of 
American, 212-213. 

Civil Service, effect of reform of the, 301. 

Class war, theory of a, to attain a real 
social democracy, 169; earliest 
form of the theory in the Commu- 
nistic Manifesto of 1848, 170 ; abso- 
lute socialism and the, 171-173; 
theory of, untenable on the premises 
of Karl Marx, 173-178; men in 
America who are misled into pre- 



369 



360 



INDEX 



dieting a, 178-179 ; question of 
leadership of the proletariat forces 
in, 180-181 ; toning down of theory 
of, among socialists themselves, 181- 
182 ; awkward dilemma of socialist 
supporters of theory, between the 
city proletariat and the farmers, 
183-184 ; extent of surrender of the 
doctrine shown by National Pro- 
gram of the Socialist party, 186 n.; 
the democratic socialization of 
American industry and life will cause 
less to be heard of the doctrine in 
future. 189. 

Coal supplies, danger of exhaustion of, 
285. 

Commission government of cities, 313. 

"Common goods," state supply of, by 
way of socializing consumption, 332. 

"Common people," the classes of Ameri- 
cans composing the, 236-239. 

Communistic experiments as protests 
against recldess American indi- 
vidualism, 72-73. 

Communist Manifesto of 1848, 170; 
quoted on the "dangerous class," 
181 n. 

Competition, individualism and, 45 ; 
gambling the logical conclusion of, 
46 ; the end of, in the swallowing up 
of the small competitor, 47-49; 
under the regime of the trust and 
under socialization, 281-283 ; com- 
petition in consumption as well as 
in production, 330. 

Competitive industries and monopolies, 
approximate distinction between, 
282 n. 

Confiscation, not an accompaniment of 
the democratic advance, 260-261 ; 
the doubtful boundary line between 
taxation, regulation, fair payment, 
and, 263 n. 

Conflict, the element of, in social ad- 
vance, 261-262. 

Congress, originally not a popularly 
elected body, 14 ; need of changes 
in, in behalf of the democracy, 115- 
117. 304, 315. 

Congressional committees, evils of sys- 
tem of, 116-117. 

Connecticut, property qualification for 
voting in early, 9. 

Conquest of the American continent, and 
eflFects on democracy. 23-35; the 
national consciousDess a fruit of the, 
65. 



Conservation of life and health, 320- 
326. 

Conservation of natural resources, op- 
posed through fear of goverimient 
ownership and operation, 285 ; to 
what grand social end it may be 
carried by the government. 286. 
314. 

Constitution, the federal : the political 
wisdom of dead America. 12-13; 
how subversive of the popular 
interest, 13-15 ; defect of un- 
changeableness of, 15 ; reason for 
its satisfactory working, 16 ; Amer- 
ican loyalty to the ideal of the, gives 
the plutocracy its main hold. 107- 
108 ; interpretation of. by the 
Supreme Court, 109 ; the inability 
to amend is a flat negation of de- 
mocracy, 110; measures of social 
reform which cannot be adopted 
because of the. 111; Fourteenth 
Amendment to, and the corpora- 
tions, 114-115; measures proper 
for democracy to take concerning, 
until it becomes amendable. 266- 
267 ; fate of, under program of 
political democratization, depends 
upon its amendability, 316-318. 

Consumers, the democracy united on 
common basis of, 250-253. 

Consumption, statistics of, 216, 220; a 
frantic competitive, for which the 
plutocracy sets the pace, 246-247; 
socialization of, 320, 330-334. 

Corporations, the small investor's share 
in capital of, 87-88 ; business se- 
crecy and uncontrolled financial 
methods of, 88-89; Fourteenth 
Amendment invoked in behalf of, 
114-115; regulation of, 276-277; 
increasing extent of federal control 
of, 290-291. 

Corruption, party, in the new democracy 
of Andrew Jackson, 18 ; use of, as a 
weapon by the plutocracy, 96 flf. ; 
existence of, since founding of the 
American republic, 97; change of 
character and source in present-day, 
97-99 ; tacit league between city. 
State, and national corruption, 100- 
101 ; the political party the main 
channel for, 104 ; remedial effect of 
the referendum on, 308-310. 

Cost of living, ratio between wage in- 
crease and, 221-222. 

Courts, question of exemption from 



INDEX 



361 



criticism, 113; complications, in- 
volutions, and procrastinations of, 
115-116. 
Crime, punishment of, in early America, 
11-12; treatment of, by the new 
democracy, 340-342. 



Dartmouth College Case, 114. 

Declaration of Independence, 2, 7, 9, 12, 
17, 21, 51; a beautiful ideal, 8; 
political and economic philosophy 
of, compared with that of the 
"Wealth of Nations," 52-53. 

Delaware, qualifications for holding of- 
fice in, in 1776, 9. 

Democracy, American: disillusionment 
concerning, 1-4; does democracy 
pay? 4; birth of a new, 4-5; ques- 
tion of character of the new, 5-6; 
real character of the "shadow- 
democracy" of 1776, 7-12 ; the fed- 
eral Constitution and democracy, 
12-16 ; progress of new spirit of, in 
first quarter of nineteenth century, 
17-18 ; belief in the attainment of, 
with the inauguration of Jackson, 
18-19; the democracy of 1829 an 
advance on that of contemporaneous 
world, 19; America now outdis- 
tanced by Europe in, and reasons, 
20-22 ; effects of slavery and of the 
necessity of conquering the conti- 
nent on, 21-22 ; the springing up of 
the new social, as an antagonist of 
the plutocracy, 118-119; accom- 
panies the plutocracy in its invasion 
of politics, 119 ; wherein the concep- 
tion of eflSciency held by the new 
democracy differs from that of the 
plutocracy, 149-150; arguments of 
the plutocracy against the new 
democracy, 153-154; a full, free, 
socialized democracy rendered inevi- 
table by the plutocratic program, 
155; evolution of this democracy 
traced, 158-161 ; wherein the new 
social democracy differs from the 
Jeffersonian and Jacksonian indi- 
vidualistic democracy, 161-162 ; the 
•ocial democracy a revolutionary 
movement by its very nature, 165- 
167; reactions inevitably excited, 
167 ; theory of attainment of a social 
democracy by a war between classes, 
169 ff. ; leaders of the social de- 



mocracy not to spring from the most 
indigent classes, as illustrated by 
the Negro and recent immigrants, 
180; and the class war, 189-190; 
rendered ultimately inevitable by 
the creation of a social surplus, 194 ; 
three levels of democratic striving 
necessary to maintain in order to 
secure, 207 ; the various forces con- 
stituting the, 235 ff. ; composed in 
the final summing up of a residue of 
population after the very rich and 
the abjectly poor have been drawn 
off, 237-238 ; question of ability of 
these forces to unite, 239-240; 
elements of solidarity found in 
antagonism to the plutocracy and a 
common interest in the social sur- 
plus, 244 ; analysis of antagonism 
of, to the plutocracy, 244-249; 
basis of common hostility to plutoc- 
racy supplemented by the common 
aim of a desire to share in the social 
surplus, 249-250 ; with elements of 
solidarity in the way of common 
antagonism to plutocracy and desire 
to share in the social surplus, by 
minor adjustments permanent unity 
of democratic forces will be attained, 
253 ; primary factors determining 
tactics of, 255 ; influence of tradi- 
tion on experiments of, 255 ; of 
growing social surplus, 255-256; 
of wide diversity in democratic 
forces, 256 ; resort to violence un- 
likely, in the tactics of the democ- 
racy, 256-259; confiscation of 
plutocratic property unlikely, 260- 
261 ; extent to which the evolution 
of democracy is a social conflict, 
261-263 ; internal adjustment of, a 
process of uniting diversified groups, 
263; while not favoring confisca- 
tion, does attack swollen fortunes, 
monopolies, special privileges, busi- 
ness secrecy, etc., 263-264; the 
goal of democracy a maximum of 
control with a minimum of regula- 
tion, 264 ; successive steps toward, 
in control of natural resources, be- 
ginning of taxation of inheritances, 
etc., 266; measures to be taken to 
secure political control, 266-267; 
consistent and constructive policy 
needed by, 268-270; necessity of 
harmony among its groups, 270- 
271 ; inertness and indifference to 



302 



INDEX 



be overcome by, 271-272; cam- 
laiga of education necessary, 273 ; 
socialization of industry aimed at, 
through government ownership, gov- 
ernment regulation, tax reform, etc., 
276 ff. ; promotion of industrial 
democracy by the trade-union, 292- 
293; political program of the, 
298 S. ; chief aim of program, as 
shown by direct nominations, the 
recall, the initiative, and the refer- 
endum, is direct appeal to the 
majority, 310; social program of 
the, 320 fif. ; conservation of life 
and health by the, 320-326; pro- 
gressively diffused education neces- 
sary to maintenance of the, 326- 
330 ; solution of the problem of the 
submerged, 335-342 ; the problem 
of the Negro, 342-346; the immi- 
gration question, 346-347 ; the 
movement toward the new democ- 
racy is a result of the efforts of the 
general community, 348-349 ; ques- 
tion of permanency of, 349 ff. ; 
fear and dread of the, and reasons, 
350-351 ; supposed incompatibility 
of, with progress, 351-353 ; fear of 
destruction of human liberty under, 
353-354 ; the argument that it is 
"too good to be true," 354-355; 
the overpopulation threat, 355-356 ; 
the menace of depopulation, 356- 
357. 

Democratic striving, three levels of, 207- 
208; the economic level, 209-223; 
the intellectual level, 223-233; 
the political level, 233-234. 

Democratization, of political parties and 
primaries, 297-301 ; of elections, 
301 ff.j of education, 320, 326- 
330. 

Department stores as illustrating stand- 
ardization, 82 n., 143. 

Depopulation, supposed menace of, in a 
socialized democracy, 356-357. 

Devine, Edward T., quoted on the new 
penology, 340-341. 

Direct primaries, 298, 299, 300, 304. 

Disillusionment in regard to American 
democracy, 1-4. 

Distribution of wealth, inequalities in, 
an argument against the effidenoy 
argument of the plutooraoy, 144- 
146. 

Dwight, Timothy, quoted on nineteenth 
century individualists, 72. 



Economic level of democratic striving, 
209-223. 

Education, believed in by the plutoc- 
racy, 143 ; element of, in demo- 
cratic striving, 223; the American 
instinct for, 224-225; a diffused, 
a necessity to democracy, 225; 
wealth means, 226; figures of 
illiteracy and literacy, 227 ; tre- 
mendous difficulties encountered by 
American, 229 ; statistics of present- 
day, 230; influence of libraries in, 
231 ; campaign of, necessary for 
the democratic advance, 273 ; the 
democratization of, 320, 326 ff. ; 
indispensability of, to the mainte- 
nance of a socialized democracy, 
326-328; advocacy of free, from 
kindergarten to university, 328; 
imperative need of improvement in 
methods of, 329-330; necessary to 
a high national efficiency in a 
democracy, 328-330 ; influence of, 
upon national consumption will be 
increasingly felt, 332-333 ; preven- 
tion of crime by promoting, 342 ; 
desire for, due to social capillarity, 
would continue under a socialized 
democracy, 352. 

Educational reform in the Jacksonian 
epoch, 18. 

EflSciency, argument of, in behalf of the 
plutocracy, 139 ff. : confuting of 
argument of, by self-evident in- 
equalities in distribution of wealth, 
144-146; the conception held by 
the new democracy, 149-150 ; com- 
parison of governmental and pri- 
vate business efficiency, 312-313 ; a 
widely diffused education necessary 
to the highest national, 328-330. 

Elections, democratization of, 300-310. 

Engels, Friedrich, 171, 172 n., 181 n. 

England, per capita wealth of, 201 n. 

Equality, social, the exception in early 
America, 10-11. 

Equality of opportunity, democratic 
policies of conservation, education, 
and socialization of consumption 
tending toward. 320-334. 

Europe, poverty of countries of, com- 
pared with America. 201-202; 
status of workmen in, compared 
with that of American workmen, 
215-216 ; government ownership 



INDEX 



363 



in, 283 ; lowering of birth rate in, 
365-356. 
Exploitation, evohition of doctrine of, 
out of growing disproportion be- 
tween social surplus and social 
misery, 200. 



Factory labor, evil effects of, 70-71. 

Factory laws, improvement and exten- 
sion of, 325-326. 

Farmer, improvement in status of the, 
176-177,. 211-212; statistics of 
increase in value of farm property, 
213-214 ; the great farm vs. the 
small farm, 214. 

Feudalism, comparison of the era of 
plutocracy and, 140 n. 

Force, resort to, not among the weapons 
of the democracy, 256-259. 

Forest Service figures, 285 n. 

Fourteenth Amendment to Constitution, 
protection of corporations by the, 
114-115. 



Gambling, the outcome of the American 
spirit of individualism, 46-47 ; end 
of gambling, or competition, is the 
swallowing up of the small gambler, 
47-49. 

Gide, Charles, cited, 175 n. 

Goodnow, Frank J., "Social Reform and 
the Constitution" by, quoted, 111- 
112. 

Government, the American: kept in sub- 
jection by the exponents of Ameri- 
can democracy, 52-54 ; once created 
was left to itself, 54 ; its spirit of 
eternal compromise, 54 ; ends by 
offering itself for exploitation to the 
two dominating political parties, 
55 ; character of, furnishes suitable 
conditions for growth of political 
parties, 55-56 ; system of, now in 
favor of the plutocracy, 117; the 
new democracy's program relative to 
amending and improving the, 298- 
319. 

Government ownership and regulation 
of industry, the aim of the new 
democracy, 276-277; as urged in 
party platforms, 278-279; back- 
wardness of America in, compared 
with Europe, 283 ; three factors 



leading to an extension of, 283; 
question of extent of, 284-285; 
possibility of ending in competition 
with private business, 286 ; in some 
instances private ownei'ship sub- 
ject to public control more desirable 
than, 287; wherein the trust has 
the advantage over, 287-288 ; illus- 
trations of cases of government 
regulation, 289-290; steady ad- 
vance in, 290 ; regulation of rail- 
roads, 290-291 ; vast scope of and 
benefits accruing from, 291-292 ; 
possibility of regulation of wages and 
prices, 293 n. 

Graft, 57-58; not a new thing in 
America, 97. See Corruption. 

Grant, President, corruption under, 97. 



H 

Hadley, Arthur T., quoted, 114-115. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 13, 16. 

Hartford Convention, 17. 

Health, government conservation of, 
320-326. 

Hours of labor, the need for shorter, 150, 
333-334 ; for women, 340. 

House of Representatives, national, 14 ; 
arrangements in, which thwart the 
will of the people and help the plu- 
tocracy, 116-117; reform of legisla- 
tive methods in, 315. 

House ownership, decrease in individual, 
and deductions therefrom, 220-221. 

Housing conditions, improvement in, 
212-213. 



I 



Icaria, communistic experiment at, 73. 

Illiteracy, statistics of, in America, 227. 

Immigrants, leaders of the democracy 
not to originate among the recent, 
180. 

Immigration, effect of, on conquest of 
American continent, 29 ; statistics 
of, 29 n. ; the national conscious- 
ness in part a result of, 65 ; effect of 
unrestricted, on the native laborer's 
condition, 68-69; an aid to the 
trust against its employees, 91 ; 
advisability of further restriction of, 
346-347. 

Imprisonment for debt in early America, 
11-12, 17. 

Income taxation, 266, 296, 314. 



364 



INDEX 



Indentured servants in our original 
democracy, 9. 

Indifference, the negative force of, in the 
democratic movement as in woman's 
suffrage, 271-272 ; antagonism pref- 
erable to, 272 n. 

Individualism : the keynote of the de- 
mocracy of 1829, 20-21 ; the subjuga- 
tion of, by the financier and the 
trust, 33-35; causes of the distinc- 
tive American quality, 36; origins 
of, in Massachusetts and the North, 
36-37; opening of a new era for, 
with opening of the back country, 
37-38 ; the pioneer the most repre- 
sentative type of, 38-39 ; the spirit 
of, in the factory builder, town 
boomer, promoter, trust manipula- 
tor, etc., 39 ; tokens of, shown in a 
certain American magnificence, 40- 
41 ; another side shown in our illimi- 
table optimism, 41-42 ; ha\ang as a 
corollary the quality of tolerance, 
42 ; highest expression of, found in 
private business and the quest of 
money, 43^4 ; riotous career of, 
applied to business, 44 ; logical 
conclusion of, in the rebate, 45 ; 
sequence of an untrammeled, found 
in an unprincipled code of business 
morals, 45 ; competition and, 45 ; 
still exists in the monopolist, 48 ; 
and in the little dealer also, but in 
subdued form, 49-50; how the 
American government was planned 
to strengthen, 52-54 ; the connec- 
tion between the slum and, 71-72 ; 
early protests against the wanton 
spirit of, 72 ; moral, religious, and 
communistic movements directed 
against, 72-73 ; monopoly age suc- 
ceeds the era of, 74 ; the new plutoc- 
racy the representative of the old 
individualism, 74 ; in the social pro- 
gram of the plutocracy, 146-148 ; 
the insensible passing from, to a 
new social ideal, 160-161 ; distribu- 
tion of taxes from the viewpoint of, 
162-163 ; approach of, toward the- 
ory of a democratic socialization 
of industry and of life, 189. 

Industrial autonomy, 281 n., 288, 289. 

Industrial program of the democracy, 
276 ff. 

Industries, socialiaation of. See Social- 
ization of industries. 

Industry, government regulation of, 275- 



277, 278-279, 283, 284-285, 280- 
288 ; vast scope of possible govern- 
ment regulation of, 291-292; the 
trade-union an agency of the de- 
mocracy's program for, 292. 

Inheritance taxation, 266, 296, 314. 

Initiative, the, 306-310; a constitu- 
tional, recommended, 318. 

Insurance by the government of citizens' 
life and health, 323-324. 

Insurgency, Congressional, merely a 
symptom, 5. 

Intellectual level of democratic striving, 
223-233. 

Interstate Commerce Commission, ac- 
tivities of, 290-291. 

Investment, the modern revolution in, 
87-88. 



Jackson, Andrew, regime of, 18. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 15 n. ; election to 
presidency, 17 ; philosophy of Adam 
Smith compared with that of, 52. 

Juvenile courts as a symptom of prog- 
ress, 338-339. 



Keith, B. F., quoted, 219 n. 
Kings, metempsychosis of, 265 n. 
Kuczynski, R. R., cited, 174 n. 



Large-scale production, one source of 
vast fortunes found in. 82 ; perma- 
nence and steady advance of, 84- 
85 ; the regulation of, as to owner- 
ship, stock issues, prices, wages, etc., 
a present necessity, 94 ; in the 
industrial program of the democ- 
racy, 281 ff. 

Leisure, America poverty of. 333-334. 

Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, cited, 177 n. 

L6vasseur, Emile, cited, 174 n. 

Levels of democratic striving below 
which the masses must not fall, 207- 
208, 209 ff. 

Liberty, fears for, under a socialized 
democracy, 353-354. 

Libraries, development of, and effects, 
231. 

Life, government conservation of, 820- 
326. 

Life insurance figures, deductions from, 
220. 



INDEX 



366 



Liquor traffic, (»ntrol of, an illustration 
of difficulty of Bocializing con- 
sumption, 331 n. 

Livestock, wealth of United States in, 
204. 

Louisiana, cession of, and effect on 
American life, 26-27. 



M 



Machinery, conquest of world by, 32. 

McMaster, J. B., cited, 9; quoted, 10. 

Magazines, the status of, in plutocratic 
America, 133-134 ; furnish one 
proof of the rise and diffusion of 
wealth, 224; figures of growth of, 
231 n. 

Magnificence, quality of, as showing 
American individualism, 40-41. 

Malthusian theory, 355-356. 

Marshall, John, 16. 

Marx, Karl, 171, 181 n, ; the absolute 
socialism of, 171-178. 

Maryland, the suffrage in early, 9. 

Massachusetts, property qualification 
for voting in early, 9 ; influence of 
early settlers in, on the nation's 
destinies, 30-37. 

"Mere physical efficiency," line of, 210. 

Merriam, C. Edward, quoted, 299. 

Mexico an example of a democracy on 
paper, 12 n. 

Millionaires, origins of, 79 ff. See Plu- 
tocracy. 

Milwaukee, socialists of, 258. 

Mineral wealth of United States, 204; 
what national control of, would 
mean to the democracy, 266. 

Money, omnipotence of, in America, 43- 
44. 

Monopoly, age of, succeeds to era of 
individualism, 64, 74 ; a chief 
source of American fortunes, 82- 
83 ; permanence and steady in- 
crease of, 84-85 ; state intervention 
in, according to program of democ- 
racy, 282-283; choice lies between 
government monopolies and private, 
instead of between government 
monopolies and competition, 283, 

Monopoly values as illustrated by rail- 
road rights of way into cities, 268- 
269. 

Mormons, the, 30: religion of, at vari- 
ance with American individualism, 
73. 

Municipal ownership, 285 d. 



N 



Negro, an illustration of the point that 
leaders of democracy are not to 
spring from the most indigent, 180 ; 
democracy's problem in the, 342- 
346. 

Negro suffrage, question of, 302-303. 

Nether world, problem for democracy 
to face in the, 335-342. 

New England, evolution of the national 
spirit from, 37. 

New Hampshire, early limitations on 
suffrage in, 9. 

New Jersey, property qualification for 
voting in early, 9. 

Newspapers, the plutocracy and, 121- 
125 ; responsibility of the public for 
many bad qualities of, 127-128; 
one reason for so-called deteriora- 
tion of, in the literacy of the unedu- 
cated, 227 n. ; stupendous growth 
of, 231. 

New York, property qualification for 
voting in early, 9. 

Neymarck, Alfred, cited, 177 n. 

North Carolina, suffrage in early, 9. 



Ochlocracy, the fear of an, 350. 

Oklahoma, opening of, for settlement, 
31. 

Opportunity, democratic policies tend- 
ing toward equality of, 320-334. 

Optimism as a sign of our American 
individualism, 41-42. 

Overpopulation, the threat of, in a 
socialized democracy, 355-356. 



Panama Canal, significance of nation's 
ability to pay for, 206; construc- 
tion of, is an illustration of an effi- 
ciently conducted public undertak- 
ing. 312. 

Parasitic trades, reform of, 325-326. 

Parcels post, the, 284. 

Party. See Political parties. 

Party platforms, democracy's industrial 
program outlined in, 277-278. 

Patten, Simon N., tribute to, 191 n. 

Penology, the new, 340-342. 

Per capita wealth of United Kingdom 
and of United States, 201 n. 

Pinchot, Gifford, quoted, 285. 



366 



INDEX 



Plutocracy, the typical class in the age 
of monopoly, 74; viewed as the 
price America is paying for the 
necessary reorganization of her 
affairs, 76-77; analysis and origins 
of the undeniably existent American 
plutocracy, 78-84 ; character of 
men who compose, 90-91 ; in the 
summing-up is based on the sup- 
port of small investors and the 
masses, 93 ; liiaintains itself because 
as a nation we do not know what to 
do, 93-94 ; the weight of, thrown 
against measures of regulation of 
large-scale productive agencies, 95 ; 
corruption the natural weapon of 
the, 96 ; present political solidarity 
of the interests which compose the, 
106; adherence and loyalty of the 
people to the federal Constitution 
the strongest support of the, 107- 
108 ; the Supreme Court as a pillar 
of the, 108-113; congressional aids 
of the, 116-117; the whole govern- 
mental system in favor of the, 117; 
general effect on legislators and 
parties of the plutocracy in politics, 
117-118; final appeal of the, must 
be to the moral judgment of the 
people, 119-120; control of news 
columns and editorial pages of news- 
papers by, 121-124 ; circumscrip- 
tion of influence of, on the press by 
the readers of newspapers, 128-131 ; 
the magazines and the, 133-134 ; 
must in the end rest its case on the 
truth, 137-138; defense of the, on 
ground of efficiency, 139 ff. ; in- 
equalities in distribution of wealth 
an answer to the efficiency argument 
of, 144-146 ; the taint in the social 
program of the, of estimating 
results according to profits, 147- 
148 ; viewed as merely the cleaner 
of our house industrial, political, 
and socio-psychological, 149 ; lack 
of understanding on part of, of true 
modern social conditions, 152 ; 
replies of, to socialism and the new 
democracy, 153-154 ; penniless 
plutocrats, dream-millionaires, who 
back up the, 154 ; the program of, 
is making a democratic revolt 
inevitable, 155; question of the 
permanence of the, 156-157; not 
as yet a unit, 242 ; grounds of lack 
of solidarity, 242-243 ; analysis of 



the democracy's antagonism 
244-249; frantic competitive con- 
sumption for which pace is set by 
the, 246-247; some wild threats 
of the, to advancing democracy, 
265 ; possible use of race hatred by, 
344. 

Poisons, prohibition of sale of, viewed as 
an expression of socialization, 289- 
290. 

Political level of democratic striving, 
233-234. 

Political parties, not contemplated by 
"the Fathers," 55; inevitability of, 
because of weakness of the govern- 
ment, 55-56 ; use and even neces- 
sity of, 60 ; are the main channel 
through which political corruption 
flows, 104 ; root of deterioration of, 
was money, 105 ; outlines of 
democracy's industrial program in 
platforms of, 277-278; control of, 
the very beginning of political 
democracy, 298; progress in legal 
regulation of, 299. 

Politicians, appearance of, in the Ameri- 
can democracy, 55-56 ; character 
of, as business men, 56-57 ; growth 
of power of, with growth of wealth 
and population, 57-58 ; process of 
strengthening and securing their 
position by, 60 ; undoubtedly have 
their place, 60; inability of the 
free American people to free itself 
from, 62-63. 

Politics, nation-wide spread of corrup- 
tion in, 99-100; trust methods 
applied to, by plutocracy, 106-107. 

Population, increase in, the demand of 
the despot rather than the demo- 
crat, 320-321 ; effect of a socialized 
democracy on rate of growth of, 
355-357. 

Post office statistics, 232. 

Poverty, of earlier social world con- 
trasted with wealth of modern, 191- 
193 ; the overpopulation theory of 
explanation of, 194 ; the disequi- 
librium between present-daj', and 
social surplus, 197-200; of Euro- 
pean countries compared with Amer- 
ica, 201-202; changes in character 
of American, 221 n. ; sickness and 
death due to, 321, 325. 

Poverty line, the, 209-210. 

President, election of, originally removed 
from the people, 14. 



INDEX 



367 



Frees, the plutocracy and the, 121 ff. ; 
influence of plutocracy over, through 
business reasons, 122-124; the 
general tone of, influenced by the 
plutocracy, 125; responsibility of 
the public for many bad qualities 
of the, 127-128, 231 n. 

Prices, government regulation of, 293 n. 

Profits, negation of, not implied by de- 
mocracy's industrial program, 280. 

Proletariat, Engels' definition of the, 
172 n. 

Pseudo-trusts, 85 n. 

Publicity, desirability of, in business, 
294. 

Public opinion, the plutocracy and, 
121 ff. ; plutocracy's control of, 
by no means complete, 135-136; 
breadth and general coherence of, in 
the United States, 136-137; seeks 
to become the ruling power, 137 ; 
opportunity for creation of, in cities, 
232. 

Public service enterprises in American 
cities, 285 n. 

Punishments for crime in early America, 
11-12. 



Qualifications for voting and for office- 
holding in the American democracy 
of 1776, &-10. 



R 



Race problem, danger residing in failure 
to grapple and solve, 344-345. 

Railroad passes, effect of prohibition of, 
on corruption, 301. 

Railroads, effect on America of advent 
of, 28; unification of the nation 
and its territory by, 31 ; combina- 
tion of, and capital, 84-85; sta- 
tistics concerning, 205; value of 
monopoly privileges illustrated by, 
268-269; progress in government 
regulation of, 276, 290-291. 

Rebate, the, viewed as the individualistic 
spirit carried to its logical conclu- 
sion, 45-46. 

Recall, the, 305-306, 

Redemptioners in original democracy, 9. 

Referendum, the, 306-310; a constitu- 
tional, 318. 

Reforming movements in America, 72- 
73. 



Reorganization, the plutocratic, 74-77. 

Representation, proportional, within the 
States, 316. 

Restrictions on suffrage and office-hold- 
ing in early America, 9-10. 

Rowntree, B. Seebohm, quoted regarding 
the "mere physical efficiency" line, 
210. 



S 



Savings bank deposits, significance of 
increase in (since 1868), 219-220. 

SchmoUer, Gustav, cited, 175 n. 

Schools, figures concerning American, 
229-230 ; need of improved methods 
in, 329. See Education. 

Secrecy an element in corporation 
methods, 87-90 ; arguments pro and 
con, 294. 

Semidemocrats, utilization of, by the 
democracy, 263. 

Senate, national, 14. 

Senators, direct election of, 304. 

Shafroth, John F., quoted, 117. 

Sherman Law, the, 94. 

Sinclair, Upton, "The Jungle" by, 178- 
179. 

Slavery, retarding effect of, on attain- 
ment of true democracy, 9, 21. 

Slum, the American, 2, 4 ; coming of, 
and causes, 69-71 ; merely the 
reverse of the daring optimism 
which had conquered the continent, 
71-72 ; democracy's problem in the, 
335-342. 

Smith, Adam, economic philosophy of, 
enunciated in the "Wealth of 
Nations," 52 ; quoted on taxation 
from the individualistic point of 
view, 162. 

Smith, J. Allen, quoted on congressional 
committees, 116. 

Social democracy, birth and evolution of 
the new, 158-161 ; the difference 
between the Jeffersonian and Jack- 
sonian democracy and, 161-162; 
a revolutionary movement per se, 
165-167; inevitable reactions ex- 
cited, 167 ; the theory of attainment 
by a class war, 169 ff. ; leaders of, 
not to spring from the most indigent, 
as illustrated by the Negro and 
recent inmiigrants, 180 ; new impetus 
given to action of, by growth of 
social surplus, 199. See Democ- 
racy. 



368 



INDEX 



Bocialism, 105; arguments of, against 
plutocracy, and vice versa, 163 ; "ab- 
solute socialism," 171-177; naive 
theory of disappearance of so-called 
"menace of socialism," and why 
erroneous, 189 n. 

Socialists, diminution of the class war 
theory among, 181-182 ; strength of, 
in Germany and in other countries, 
182; extent of surrender of class 
war doctrine by, 186 n. ; adoption 
by, of a theory of a democratic 
socialization of industry and of life, 
189. 

Socialization of industries, a part of 
democracy's program, 276 ff. ; dif- 
ferent degrees of, in different indus- 
tries, 279-280; minute rules and 
regulations not necessary for, 280 ; 
does not involve the negation of 
profits, 280; analogy between the 
trust and, 281 ; industrial autonomy 
8D opposition theory, 281 n. ; ne- 
cessity of high industrial efficiency 
under, because of high cost of 
maintenance, 287 ; expression al- 
ready given to socialization in 
prohibition of sale of poisons, 
alcoholic beverages, of gambling, 
of firecrackers, etc., 289-290; just 
distribution of the product of 
industry an object of, 294-297; 
socialization of wealth by taxation, 
295-297 (see Taxation) ; of the 
business of health-keeping, 320- 
326 ; of consumption, 320, 330-334. 

Social reform, the plutocracy's program 
of, 143, 320-347. 

Social surplus, definition of phrase, 191 ; 
ignorance and poverty anachronistic 
in view of existence of a, 191 fiF. ; 
creation of, by steam and machinery, 
in eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies, 193-194 ; the opportunity 
for a socialized democracy created 
by, 194, 195; in the beginning of 
era of, held by men who had to 
share it with the masses, 195-196; 
advantages of, passed on indirectly 
to the working classes, 196; effect 
of the accumulation of, on the 
inevitable democracy, 196-197 ; 
disequilibrium between social wealth 
and existing social misery, 197- 
200; inevitableness of the success 
of the popular struggle for, reasoned 
from the success to date, 200-201 •. 



statistics of national wealth, 203- 
205 ; relation of the three levels — 
economic, intellectual, and political 
— of democratic striving to the, 
207-208 ; a common interest in an 
element of solidarity among the 
democracy, 244, 249-250 ; absorp- 
tion of undue share of, by unregu- 
lated monopolies, 282-283. 

Solidarity, complexity of conception of, 
241-242 ; lack of, among the plu- 
tocracy, 242-243 ; chief elements of, 
among the democracy, 244. 

South Carolina, restrictions on suffrage 
in early, 9 ; qualifications for oflSce- 
holding, 9-10. 

Spargo, John, quoted, 183. 

Spending power of the masses, 216-220. 

Spoils system, inauguration of, with 
Jackson's election, 18 ; political 
parties fortified but debauched by, 
57. 

Standardization, of industry by the plu- 
tocracy, 75-77, 82-85 ; as a maker 
of American fortunes, 82-83 ; of 
plutocracy's control of politics, 97- 
107 ; of plutocracy's control of the 
press, 126-127. 

Standard of living, raising of, by lower- 
ing birth rate, 320. 

Standard Oil Company, 84, 140 n. 

Steffens, Lincoln, quoted on political 
corruption, 99-100. 

Stocks, position of the small investor in, 
88-90. 

Submerged, problem of the, 335-342. 

Suffrage, early limitations on, in different 
states, 9-10; woman and Negro, 
302-303. 

Supreme Court, undemocratic character 
of, 14 ; interpretation of the Consti- 
tution by, 109 ; unlimited power of, 
109-111 ; reasons for favoring pluto- 
cratic cause rather than the demo- 
cratic, 112; should not be shielded 
from criticism, 113; hope of the 
democracy in the sensitiveness of, 
to the popular will, 317-318- 

Switzerland, the recall in, 306 n. ; con- 
stitutional amendments in, 318. 



Taft, William H., quoted on eritioiam 
of courts, 113 n. 

Taxation : from the individualistic view- 
point, 162-163 : use of, in the new 



INDEX 



369 



Bocialized democracy, to accomplish 
social ends, 163-164; socialization 
of wealth by, 295-297. 

Tax reform as a means to the democratic 
end. 276. 277. 

Telephone development, 232. 

Theatrical Trust and the free expression 
of opinion, 134. 

Tobacco Trust, 86. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, on the American 
democracy, 19-20. 

Tolerance as a corollary of American 
optimism, 42. 

Town-meeting, expression of the primitive 
democratic spirit in the, 7-8. 

Trade-union, improvement of labor 
conditions by the, 175 ; a repre- 
sentative and powerful agency of 
democracy in attaining its program, 
292-293 ; problems and possibilities 
of the, in relation to men incapable 
of earning union wages, 337 ; must 
always be open -at the bottom, 338. 

Tradition, influence of, in democratic 
experiments, 255. 

Transportation, statistics of, 205. 

Trust, advent of the, 32-33 ; typical of a 
new period in America, 64 ; the 
typical expression of the plutocratic 
reorganization following the era of 
individualism, 75 ; characteristic 
features of the, 75-76 ; was a neces- 
sity for the reorganization of Ameri- 
can affairs, 76 ; at the same time a 
misfortune, 76-77 ; certain indus- 
tries not susceptible to the trust pro- 
cess, 83 ; increase in growth and 
number of trusts, 84-85 ; acts as a 
unit against unorganized masses, 
85-86 ; power over consumers and 
employees, 86 ; treatment of sur- 
viving competitors, 86-87 ; rule of 
the magnate over the, 87; uncon- 
trolled business methods of the, and 
position of small investor in, 87- 
90; aids of the, in our protective 
tariff, our internal free trade, un- 
restricted immigration, and our 
increasing national wealth, 91 ; 
impossibility of setting limits to 
future development of trusts, 91- 
92; the question of what to do 
about the, 93-95 ; methods of the, 
applied by the plutocracy to politics, 
106-107 ; comparison drawn be- 
tween the feudal despotism and the, 
140 n. ; analogy between socializa- 
2b 



tion and the, 281; desirability of 
government chaperonage of, 286 n. ; 
advantages and disadvantages of, 
in comparison with government 
ownership, 287-288. 

U 

Unearned increment from property 
invested with a public interest, 
reversion of, to the government, 295. 

Union Pacific Railroad, 31, 64. 

United Cigar Stores Company, 86, 248. 

United States, per capita wealth in, 
201 n. ; statistics of present wealth 
of, 203-205. 

United States Steel Corporation, 84, 92. 

Universities, though trust-endowed, may 
teach democracy, 135. 

Utopias, difference between ideal, and 
the new democracy, 354-355. 



Vaudeville artists' salaries, 219 n. 

Violence, undesirability and unlikelihood 
of, in the tactics of the democracy, 
256-259; previous resorts to, in 
Colorado and elsewhere, 259 n. 

Virginia, voting in early, 9. 



W 



Wages, the steady rise in, 174-175; 
comparison of American and Euro- 
pean, 215 ; ratio of increase in, to 
increase in cost of living, 221-222 ; 
adjustment of, to prices helps to 
bring forces of democracy into 
unity, 250-253 ; regulation of, by 
government, 293 n. 

Waste, avoidance of, as an argument for 
the plutocracy, 142, 143. See Effi- 
ciency. 

Wealth, inequalities in distribution of, 
144-146; democracy's hope based 
upon the steady increase in, 191 ; 
sketch of changes which have oc- 
curred in the world's wealth, 191- 
198; of America as compared with 
European countries, 201-202 ; sta- 
tistics of, of our country, 203-205 ; 
advance of the average citizen in, 
210-215 ; diffusion of, as shown by 
statistics of consumption of goods, 
216-220; education implied by, 
226. See also Social surplus. 



370 



INDEX 



Woman's suffrage movement, indiflFer- 

ence tho chief enemy of, 272; 

extent of, 802. 
Women employed, statistics of, at home 

and abroad, 216 n. ; regulation of 

hours of labor for, 340. 
Women's Trade Union League, 340. 



Working classes, improvement in condi- 
tion of, since 1848, 174-176; com- 
parison as to economic statue of 
American and European, 216-216; 
increase in wages compared with 
increase in cost of living, 221-222. 

Working day, length of, 150, 333, 340. 



Printed in the United Sutes of America. 



W 253 82 



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